Fort MacMurray, Alberta is a location with a rich and interesting history. Until late in the 18th century the area was inhabited by Cree, and it was not until 1778 that the very first European visited the region. The Cree used the surface deposits of the Athabasca oil sands as a treatment for waterproofing canoes. Fort MacMurray and the oil sands have both played a very vital role in Canada’s petroleum industry. In the 1920s the Alcan Oil Company was the first to run tests on a bulk basis, and the first business to actually extract oil successfully from the Athabasca oil sands was the Abasands Oil Company, but there was not a big volume of production. The oil was extracted from the sand by utilizing hot water.
By the time WWII began the Athabasca oil sands area was capable of producing more than 1,000 barrels of oil a day, and the region was an important staging area for Canada and the USA during the war. By the year 1947 the name was simply MacMurray because the fort had been dropped, but in 1962 the city was named Fort MacMurray once more. The population of the town had reached around 2,000 residents in 1966, and in the coming years the growth of the town really exploded. The Great Canadian Oil Sands was opened the following year, and other oil refining plants soon started appearing as well. By the year 1971 Fort MacMurray had a population of 6,847, and this grew up to more than 31,000 within the next decade.
