Morganton is a city in and the county seat of Burke County, North Carolina, United States. The population was 16,918 at the 2010 census. Morganton is approximately 240 miles northeast of Atlanta, Georgia.
Morganton is one of the principal cities in the Hickory-Lenoir-Morganton, NC Metropolitan Statistical Area. A site five miles north of here has been identified as the Mississippian culture chiefdom of Joara, occupied from AD 1400 to AD 1600. This was also the site of Fort San Juan, built in 1567 by a Spanish expedition as the first European settlement in the interior of North America, 40 years before the English settlement of Jamestown, Virginia.