Southern High School

Southern High School opened on Ellis Road in 1955, consolidating the upper grades of several smaller community schools in the southern part of Durham County. In the early 1990s, it moved to its present site after the Glaxo pharmaceuticals company, which sought to expand onto the school site, arranged with Durham Public Schools to provide a replacement campus. The current Southern, opened in 1993, has an official student capacity of 1,540 in 284,000 square feet, on a campus of 84 acres.