Morehead City

Morehead City is a port city in Carteret County, North Carolina, United States. The population was 8,661 at the 2010 census. Morehead City celebrated the 150th anniversary of its founding on May 5, 2007. It forms part of the Crystal Coast. In the early 1850s, a group of investors named the Shepard Point Land Company purchased 600 acres of land on the eastern tip of the peninsula that is now the site of Morehead City. Their objective was to take advantage of the deep channel of Beaufort Inlet, leading into Shepard Point, to construct a port and connect it by rail to Goldsboro. Governor John... Motley Morehead, for whom the town is named, a principal member of this group, initiated construction of the railroad in 1855 and by July 1858 rail service had been established. The town was laid out in city blocks of 16 lots each, reaching to 15th Street, with a system of alleys within each block in the form of an H, so that all houses and businesses could be serviced from the alleys. Much of this "Philadelphia plan" still exists today. The town was officially incorporated by the North Carolina Senate in 1860, by which time the town's population had grown to more than 300.
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