Biohazard and Pathogen Disinfection in Morganton, NC

Morganton is a city in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains and the county seat and largest city of Burke County, sitting on Interstate 40 between Asheville and the Hickory-Lenoir-Morganton metropolitan area.

Morganton was incorporated in 1784 and named for General Daniel Morgan, the Revolutionary War hero who led Continental troops at the Battles of Cowpens and King's Mountain; the county seat was originally called Morgansborough before the name was shortened.

Burke County itself was formed in 1777 and once encompassed much of western North Carolina - parts of it later became eight other counties, including Buncombe, Caldwell, Catawba, and Yancey.

The 2020 census counted 17,474 people in Morganton, and Census Bureau figures put the city at about 6,888 households with an owner-occupied housing rate of about 55 percent.

Morganton's defining institution is Broughton Hospital, the state psychiatric hospital authorized by the legislature in 1875 and opened on March 29, 1883, as the Western Carolina Insane Asylum; it was renamed in 1959 for Governor J. Melville Broughton and remains one of the city's largest employers.

The North Carolina School for the Deaf opened in Morganton on October 2, 1894, with 104 students and eight teachers, on a hilltop site local leaders had offered the state; its monumental Main Building still dominates the campus.

Western Piedmont Community College, chartered on April 2, 1964, is located in Morganton, and its library is named for Morganton native Sam J. Ervin Jr., the U.S. senator who chaired the Senate Watergate hearings in 1973.

Burke County has the highest proportion of state government employees of any North Carolina county outside the Raleigh area, and its concentration of state institutions has earned it the nickname "the Western State Capital."

Morganton was chosen for the western campus of the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics, a $58 million residential campus for high-achieving high-school juniors and seniors.

The Historic Burke Foundation operates Quaker Meadows, the Revolutionary-era home of the McDowell family, whose members helped lead the Overmountain Men.