Fort McMurray is a community within the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo, Alberta. It was a city between 1980 and April 1, 1995, when it was merged with Improvement District No. 18, creating the municipality of Wood Buffalo. Fort McMurray remains a designation used by Canada Post for mail delivery in this area.
Before the arrival of Europeans in the late 18th Century, the Cree were the dominant First Nations people in the Fort McMurray area....
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Fort McMurray is a community within the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo, Alberta. It was a city between 1980 and April 1, 1995, when it was merged with Improvement District No. 18, creating the municipality of Wood Buffalo. Fort McMurray remains a designation used by Canada Post for mail delivery in this area.
Before the arrival of Europeans in the late 18th Century, the Cree were the dominant First Nations people in the Fort McMurray area. The oil sands were known to the locals and the surface deposits were actually used to waterproof their canoes. In 1778, the first of the European explorers, Peter Pond, came to the region in search of furs as the European demand for this commodity at the time was strong. Peter Pond explored the region further south along the Athabasca River and the Clearwater River, but chose to set up a trading post much farther north by the Athabasca River near Lake Athabasca. However, his post closed in 1788 in favour of Fort Chipewyan, now the oldest...
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