Morganton is a city in and the county chair of Burke County, North Carolina, United States. The population was 16,918 at the 2010 census. Morganton is approximately 75 miles (121 km) northwest of Charlotte.

Morganton is one of the principal cities in the Hickory-Lenoir-Morganton, NC Metropolitan Statistical Area. A site five miles north of Morganton has been identified as the Mississippian culture chiefdom of Joara, occupied from AD 1400 to AD 1600. This was after that the site of Fort San Juan, built in 1567 by a Spanish expedition as the first European concurrence in the interior of North America, 40 years past the English harmony of Jamestown, Virginia.

The oldest-known European inland (non-coastal) settlement in the United States of Fort San Juan has been identified at Joara, a former Mississippian culture chiefdom located practically five miles north of present-day Morganton. In 1567 a Spanish expedition built the fort there, while seeking to announce an interior route to Mexican silver mines. This was greater than 40 years before the English arranged Jamestown, Virginia, their first permanent settlement in North America.

The Spanish left a 31-man garrison that occupied the fort for 18 months past being overcome in a Mississippian attack. Five other Spanish forts in the larger interior region were afterward destroyed more or less that time. Only one soldier survived. The fort and Indian harmony have been below professional excavation past the to come 21st century, with findings published past 2004. Europeans associated with the British colonies did not attempt to approve this in the distance west for approximately 200 years, organizing Burke County in 1777.