NC flea market La Pulga has been a destination for 41 years. Here’s what will replace it.

Maria Bautista started 21 years ago with a small booth at the Buckhorn Jockey Lot & Flea Market, sleeping in her car on Friday nights to make sure she got a spot on Saturday.

The Graham resident was pregnant with her first daughter, Norma, at the time. Now she and her husband, Juan Garcia, have six children. Norma and her husband added a new baby to the group eight months ago.

The children grew up at the Buckhorn market, located across from the Petro Truck Stop off Interstates 85/40 at exit 157 in Efland.

They played in the market aisles, sleeping on pillows and blankets tucked under the rough, wooden vendor tables every weekend. Toys, trinkets and candy piled for sale above their heads covered the fabric tablecloths giving them privacy.

“Sometimes in the evenings, we’d have a cookout here. We would celebrate birthdays,” Norma Bautista said, as she sat under the canopy of their booth waiting for crowds to arrive on a humid Saturday morning.

“There are a lot of memories here,” her mother said in Spanish, as Norma interpreted for her.

They heard rumors recently that the flea market was being sold, but there had been rumors before.

Then on June 15, the family and other vendors got a flyer.

The market was closing June 30, the management said. The vendors had until July 15 to remove their structures and any remaining goods.

Maria Bautista said she’s not sure where her family will go. The Durham Green Market is still open on East Pettigrew Street in Durham, but was for sale in recent years, and other markets are located in Greensboro, Raleigh and farther away.

“I like working and selling at the flea market,” Bautista said. “I worked so hard to get this place. Now, I’m going to work hard to find another place.”

Trucking terminal, warehouses planned

For 41 years, the market known locally as Little Mexico and La Pulga — The Flea — has been a relaxing way to pass a Sunday afternoon and a lifeline for those who can’t afford retail prices.

It attracts people from all over — Durham, Charlotte, Virginia and points in between — to buy and sell clothes, produce and other goods. The back row, under the shade trees, is where vendors like Ruth and Alvaro Hernandez sell live poultry, pigs, even a calf, to customers seeking fresh meat that’s free from chemicals, Ruth Hernandez said.

“A lot of people working here are very sick and can’t get a job, or they are people without documents” that let them legally stay in the United States, she said.

R+L Carriers, based in Greensboro, could replace the market with a trucking terminal next year if the Mebane City Council approves the plan Monday night. The meeting starts at 6 p.m. at the Glendel Stephenson Municipal Building in Mebane.

The plan calls for a 135,950-square-foot building on just over 82 acres, with room for a 53,600-square-foot expansion. It also includes a 19,800-square-foot maintenance building, a truck wash building and a fueling island.

A truck terminal is a key point in a distribution network, used for unloading goods and materials from one truck and loading them onto other trucks to be delivered. The Buckhorn terminal could serve up to 283 trucks at full buildout, and offer up to 190 jobs, project officials said. Construction could start in 2025 and last 18 to 24 months.

The council will also consider a second plan from ELLCO LLC for two warehouses on 49 acres adjacent to the trucking terminal.

The Buckhorn Industrial light-manufacturing development would add up to 526,380 square feet at Buckhorn and West Ten roads. Both projects are located in Orange County’s 900-acre Buckhorn Economic Development District.

The council is being asked to annex both projects into the city limits.

Transforming a rural community

The flea market was surrounded by farms, forests and rural homes when it opened in 1983. The only other business was a gas station next door until 1999, when the Petro was built across the road.

Orange County designated the area for commercial growth in 1984, but nothing happened until water and sewer lines were installed. Morinaga America Foods Inc., a Japanese candy maker, opened in 2016, and more distribution and manufacturing warehouses followed:

▪ Medline Industries: The medical-supply company’s 220-acre distribution center opened in 2023 on West Ten Road beside Gravelly Hill Middle School.

▪ Buckhorn Industrial Park: The 46-acre campus at Buckhorn and West Ten roads has attracted Thermo Fisher Scientific to a 375,000-square-foot building. German power tool manufacturer Stihl is moving into the second, 265,200-square-foot building.

▪ Buckhorn Business Centre: The 128-acre light industrial park under construction behind the Petro truck stop includes six buildings and up to 1 million square feet.

▪ Project Skywalker: Williams Development Group is approved for 900,000 square feet in two warehouses at West Ten and Bushy Cook roads, just east of the Soccer.com complex.

▪ Efland Industrial Park: The county has approved 886,240 square feet in four buildings at the eastern end of the Buckhorn district. The project is pending construction and will cover 100 acres beside Interstates 85/40 between exits 160 and 161 in Efland.

Flea market’s history

The news that Buckhorn’s flea market could close doesn’t upset everyone, Orange County resident Don Compton told the Mebane Planning Board in June. The market has been a hub for drug sales, prostitution and other criminal activities for many years, he said.

The Orange County Sheriff’s Office has responded to 73 calls at that address in the last three years, spokeswoman Alicia Stemper said in a recent email.

Those included 14 larcenies and robberies; six assaults; 12 vandalism and damage to property calls; two stolen property and two counterfeit item calls; and three driving while impaired calls, a drug violation and an overdose.

In April, the sheriff’s office asked the public for help finding a woman and a man who had threatened a vendor with a knife and a handgun, and robbed him of cash and second-hand electronics.

Historical records show crime and other issues involving the flea market are not new.

In 1985, there were 31 calls to the Sheriff’s Department about criminal activity, according to county records, and in 2006, the state’s anti-counterfeit task force raided the market, seizing over $700,000 worth of counterfeit merchandise and arresting four people.

Orange County’s Inspections Division shut down the main building that year for major code violations. It was condemned in 2007.