Murphy is a town in and the county chair of Cherokee County, North Carolina, United States. It is situated at the confluence of the Hiwassee and Valley rivers. It is the westernmost county chair in the disclose of North Carolina, approximately 360 miles (580 km) from the permit capital in Raleigh. The population of Murphy was 1,627 at the 2010 census.

This area had long been portion of the homelands of the Cherokee people. They knew this site along the Hiwassee River as Tlanusi-yi (the Leech Place). They had a legend just about a giant leech named Tlanusi, that lived in the river here. The Trading Path (later called the “Unicoi Turnpike”) passed by the cutting edge site of Murphy, connecting the Cherokee lands east of the mountains in the melody of what were known to European colonists as the “Overhill Towns” of Tennessee.

After European Americans began to allow here, they named the site “Hunnington/ Huntington” after A.R.S. Hunter. He conventional the first trading broadcast prior to 1828, where he would trade next the Cherokee, early European-American settlers, and U.S. Army soldiers on expeditions, or stationed at reachable Fort Butler. He was next appointed as the settlement’s first postmaster, erecting the first Post Office.

European Americans higher renamed the pact as Murphy for North Carolina politician Archibald Murphey. He was influential in moot advances for the people of North Carolina in the beforehand 19th century. The native spelling of the town was to be “Murphey” but the “e” was lost, or dropped at some narrowing in history.