Burke County, North Carolina

Burke County administrative offices are located at 200 Avery Avenue, Morganton, NC 28680; phone: 828-764-9000.

Burke County, organized in 1784, originally took in all of present-day Burke, Yancey, Mitchell, Madison, and Catawba counties and portions of present-day Swain, Haywood, Buncombe, Avery, Watauga, Caldwell, Alexander, McDowell, Rutherford, Cleveland, and Lincoln counties. The Old Burke County Courthouse, located on the original public square is the earliest example of truly urban building left in Morganton. Constructed about 1837 as a vernacular Classical Revival building, the courthouse was renovated in the early twentieth century in the Renaissance Revival mode. [1]

1. Suzanne Pickens Wylie, Preservation Consultant, Historic and Architectural Resources of Morganton, Burke County, N.C., nomination document, 1986, National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places, Washington, D.C.