Eli Whitney is an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...

in southeastern

Alamance County, North Carolina Alamance County (), from the North Carolina Collection's website at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Retrieved September 18, 2012. is a County (United States), county in North Carolina. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 ...

, United States. It is located at the intersection of

North Carolina Highway 87 North Carolina Highway 87 (NC 87) is a primary state highway in the U.S. state of North Carolina. NC 87 begins in the Atlantic coastal town of Southport and crosses into Virginia at the Virginia state line five miles (8 km) ...

, and Greensboro-Chapel Hill Road. To the south is Mandale and to the west is Snow Camp. The

United States Postal Service The United States Postal Service (USPS), also known as the Post Office, U.S. Mail, or simply the Postal Service, is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the executive branch of the federal governmen ...

considers Eli Whitney part of the Graham delivery area. Eli Whitney gained its name from the inventor of the

cotton gin A cotton gin—meaning "cotton engine"—is a machine that quickly and easily separates cotton fibers from their seeds, enabling much greater productivity than manual cotton separation.. Reprinted by McGraw-Hill, New York and London, 1926 (); ...

Eli Whitney Eli Whitney Jr. (December 8, 1765January 8, 1825) was an American inventor, widely known for inventing the cotton gin in 1793, one of the key inventions of the Industrial Revolution that shaped the economy of the Antebellum South. Whitney's ...

. The reasoning for this was because there was once a cotton gin located in the community, but has been gone for many years now. Eli Whitney was once home to a school as well, but it too closed and was later demolished. The school's gymnasium was left standing and now serves as a community center.

References

Unincorporated communities in Alamance County, North Carolina {{AlamanceCountyNC-geo-stub