Fort McMurray ( ) is an urban service area in the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo in Alberta, Canada. It is located in northeast Alberta, in the middle of the Athabasca oil sands, surrounded by boreal forest. It has played a significant role in the development of the national petroleum industry. The 2016 Fort McMurray wildfire led to the evacuation of its residents and caused widespread damage.
Formerly a city, Fort McMurray became an urban service area when it amalgamated with Improvement District No. 143 on April 1, 1995, to create the Municipality of Wood Buffalo (renamed the RM of Wood Buffalo on August 14, 1996). Despite its current official designation of urban service area, many locals, politicians and the media still refer to Fort McMurray as a city. Fort McMurray was known simply as McMurray between 1947 and 1962.
History
Before the arrival of Europeans in the late 18th century, the Cree were the dominant First Nations people in the Fort McMurray area. The Athabasca oil sands were known to the locals and the surface deposits were used to waterproof their canoes. During the fur trade, the location of Fort McMurray, west of Methye Portage, was an important junction on the fur trade route from eastern Canada to the Athabasca Country.
In 1778, the first European explorer, Peter Pond, came to the region in search of furs, as the European demand for this commodity at the time was strong. Pond explored the region farther 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 continuous settlement in Alberta.
In 1790, the explorer Alexander MacKenzie made the first recorded description of the oil sands. By that time, trading between the explorers and the Cree was already occurring at the confluence of the Clearwater and Athabasca rivers. The Hudson's Bay Company and the North West Company were in fierce competition in this region. Fort McMurray was established there as a Hudson's Bay Company post by 1870, named for the Chief Factor William McMurray. It continued to operate as a transportation stopover in the decades afterwards. The Alberta and Great Waterways Railway arrived in 1915 complementing existing steamboat service.
The community has played a significant role in the history of the petroleum industry in Canada. Oil exploration is known to have occurred in the early 20th century, but Fort McMurray's population remained small, no more than a few hundred people. By 1921, there was serious interest in developing a refining plant to separate the oil from the sands. Alcan Oil Company was the first outfit to begin bulk tests at Fort McMurray. The nearby community of Waterways was established to provide a southern terminus for waterborne transportation when the Alberta and Great Waterways Railway reached there in 1921.
Abasands Oil was the first company to successfully extract oil from the oil sands through hot water extraction by the 1930s, but production was very low. Fort McMurray's processing output gradually grew to over 1,100 barrels/day by World War II, and Fort McMurray was set up by the US and Canadian forces as staging ground for the Canol Project.
Fort McMurray and Waterways amalgamated as the village of McMurray (the "Fort" was dropped until 1962, when it was restored to reflect its heritage) by 1947, and became a town a year later. Fort McMurray was granted the status of new town so it could get more provincial funding. By 1966, the town's population was over 2,000.
In 1967, the Great Canadian Oil Sands (now Suncor) plant opened and Fort McMurray's growth soon took off. More oil sands plants were opened, especially after the 1973 oil crisis and the 1979 energy crisis, when serious political tensions and conflicts in the Middle East triggered oil price spikes. The population of the town reached 6,847 by 1971 and climbed to 31,000 by 1981, a year after its incorporation as a city.
The population peaked at almost 37,000 in 1985, then declined to under 34,000 by 1989. Low oil prices since the oil price collapse in 1986 slowed the oil sands production greatly, as oil extraction from the oil sands is a very expensive process and lower world prices made this uneconomical.
On April 1, 1995, the City of Fort McMurray and Improvement District No. 143 were amalgamated to form the Municipality of Wood Buffalo. The new municipality was subsequently renamed the Regional Municipality (RM) of Wood Buffalo on August 14, 1996. As a result, Fort McMurray was no longer officially designated a city. Instead, it was designated an urban service area within a specialized municipality. The amalgamation resulted in the entire RM of Wood Buffalo being under a single government. Its municipal office is located in Fort McMurray, which accounts for the great majority of the RM's population; all but 5,000 of the RM's residents live in the Fort McMurray urban service area.
The city continued to grow for a few years even after the oil bust caused by the 2003 collapse in world oil prices. Oil price increases since 2003 made oil extraction profitable again for around a decade, until another slump in oil prices which began in December 2014 and deepened in 2015 resulted in layoffs and postponement of projects.
In June 2013, heavy rains caused the Hangingstone River to flood, causing a six-day state of emergency, a bridge collapse, the closure of highways 63 and 881, and the evacuation of 150 people.
May 2016 wildfire
On May 3, 2016, a large wildfire burning southwest of Fort McMurray resulted in the mandatory evacuation of the community. Record-breaking temperatures, reaching , low relative humidity and strong winds contributed to the fire's rapid growth in forests affected by "an unusually dry and warm winter".
Upwards of 88,000 people in the community and surrounding region were evacuated.Canada wildfire: 20% of Fort McMurray homes destroyed, says MP, BBC (May 8, 2016).Andrew V. Pestano, Official: About 20 percent of Fort McMurray homes destroyed in wildfire, UPI (May 9, 2016). It was Canada's largest recorded wildfire evacuation in history and third-largest recorded environmental disaster evacuationAngela Fritz, Fort McMurray wildfire evacuation was largest on record in Canada, Washington Post (May 4, 2016). behind the 1979 Mississauga train derailment and the 1950 Red River flood.
About one-fifth of homes in the community were reported to be destroyed in the fire.
April 2020 flood On April 27, 2020, massive ice jams along the Athabasca River resulted in a major flood. It devastated the downtown of Fort McMurray, submerging streets and ruining businesses, cars and houses.
Approximately 13,000 people from Fort McMurray and the surrounding area were evacuated.
May 2024 wildfire
On 14 May 2024, a wildfire led to the evacuation of several neighborhoods in the urban service area.
The evacuation displaced upwards of 6,000 people from their homes in these neighborhoods.
Geography
Fort McMurray is northeast of Edmonton on Highway 63, about west of the Saskatchewan border, nestled in the boreal forest at the confluence of the Athabasca River, the Clearwater River, the Hangingstone River, and the Horse River. It sits at above sea level. Fort McMurray is the largest community in the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo.
White spruce, trembling aspen, balsam poplar and white birch are the most prominent native trees in and around town. Black spruce and tamarack occur in poorly drained areas and jack pine may be seen on the driest sites. European aspen, blue spruce and sand cherry are among the exotic trees occasionally seen.
Climate With severe winters except during periods of warming chinook winds, mild to warm summers and only three months whose average temperature is higher than , Fort McMurray has a borderline subarctic climate (Köppen: Dfc), being just below the threshold of humid continental climate (Dfb), with May and September average temperature of . It falls into the Natural Resources Canada (NRC) Plant Hardiness Zone 3a.
The community lies at a lower elevation than most other parts of Alberta, so under the right conditions it can be a "hot spot" for Alberta.
Temperatures range from an average of in January, to in July. The average annual precipitation is and falls mainly in the summer months. Average annual snowfall is , with almost all of it falling between October and April.
The highest temperature ever recorded in Fort McMurray was on June 30, 2021. The lowest temperature ever recorded was on February 1, 1917 and December 31, 1933.
Neighbourhoods Neighbourhoods in Fort McMurray include Abasand Heights, Beacon Hill, Dickinsfield, Eagle Ridge, Grayling Terrace, Gregoire, Lower Townsite, Parsons Creek, Prairie Creek, Saline Creek, Stone Creek, Thickwood Heights, Timberlea, Waterways and Wood Buffalo Estates.
Demographics
Federal census In the 2021 census, the Fort McMurray population centre recorded residents living in of its total private dwellings, a change of from its 2016 population of . With a land area of , it had a population density of in 2021.
In the 2016 census, the Fort McMurray population centre recorded 66,573 residents living in 23,937 of its 28,567 total private dwellings, a change from its 2011 population of 60,555. With a land area of , it had a population density of in 2016.
Municipal census
+ Municipal census population, Fort McMurray urban service area Year Permanent population Shadow/non-permanent population Combined population 2015 78,382 4,342 82,724 2018 72,056 3,559 75,615 2021 72,917 3,089 76,006 2025 82,393 1,074 83,467 Source: RM of Wood Buffalo municipal censuses.
Between 2021 and 2025, the urban permanent population grew by 7,207 residents (9.59%), the largest increase in recent census cycles. Growth was concentrated in specific neighbourhoods: Downtown grew 20.43% to 12,811 residents, Abasand grew 23.44% to 4,656, and Thickwood grew 9.21% to 16,405, while Waterways saw a small decline of 2.56%.
The 2025 census also found the region's average age to be 33.9, significantly younger than the national Canadian average of 41.6, with children aged 0–14 making up 22% of the population, well above the national average of 15.2%.
Migration Fort McMurray is an increasingly multicultural community. The 2021 census published by the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo found roughly 6,700 people moved to the region since the 2018 census.
The top four provinces that sent people were other communities in Alberta (55 per cent), followed by Newfoundland and Labrador (13 percent), and British Columbia and Ontario (nine percent each).
This is a drastic change from the 2012 municipal census, which was taken when Fort McMurray and the oil sands was undergoing a huge period of economic and population growth. That census reported people from Ontario represented 27.5 percent of Canadians coming to Fort McMurray, followed by British Columbia (26.3 percent) and Newfoundland and Labrador (17.5 percent). People from elsewhere in Alberta made up 3.1 per cent of the population.
The RM of Wood Buffalo's 2025 municipal census found a similar pattern to 2021, with just over half of newcomers (51.47%) relocating from elsewhere within Alberta, commonly from Edmonton and Calgary. Ontario (13.36%), Newfoundland and Labrador (10.27%), and British Columbia (9.63%) remained the most common origins outside the province. The most commonly cited reason for relocating to the region was to reunite with family members (37.76%), followed by finding suitable or improved housing (27.63%) and starting new employment (18.73%).
Ethnicity