Interactive timeline · 3,800 BCE to 2026
From Head-Smashed-In to the oil sands: 6,000 years of Alberta in 38 moments.
38 moments8 eras64 sourcesAbout ↓
3,800 BCE – 1753
For thousands of years Blackfoot, Tsuut'ina, Stoney Nakoda, Cree, Dene and Dane-zaa peoples hunted, traded and recorded their histories on stone.
At the southern tip of the Porcupine Hills, Plains peoples drove bison along stone-cairn drive lanes and over a cliff for nearly 6,000 years, from about 5,800 years ago until around 1850. Deep layers of bones lie below the cliff, beside a camp and butchering area with tipi rings and tools. It is one of the oldest and largest bison jumps in North America and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Writing-on-Stone, known in Blackfoot as Áísínai'pi, holds the largest concentration of rock carvings and paintings on the North American prairies, some of them about 2,000 years old. The Blackfoot Confederacy describes the site as evidence of its continuing relationship with the land. UNESCO named it a World Heritage Site in July 2019.
Southern Alberta is the territory of the Blackfoot Confederacy (Siksika, Kainai or Blood, and Piikani), the Tsuut'ina and the Stoney Nakoda, who later signed Treaty 7. To the north lived Cree, Dene (Chipewyan) and Dane-zaa (Beaver) peoples, later parties to Treaties 6 and 8. Eight First Nations and the Métis traded at Rocky Mountain House alone.
1754 – 1873
Traders and explorers arrived from Hudson Bay and Montreal, followed by smallpox and the whisky trade.
HBC servant Anthony Henday travelled inland from York Factory with Plains Cree guides led by Attickasish. On October 14, 1754, about 18 miles southeast of present-day Red Deer, they reached a great camp of the 'Archithinues' (Siksika or Atsina) of about 200 tipis, where he was served bison tongues. His report that the Archithinues rode horses was later met with scepticism and laughter.
After crossing Methye Portage with Dene and Cree guidance, Peter Pond wintered in 1778–79 on the Athabasca River about 40 miles from Lake Athabasca. His trip opened the fur-rich Athabasca country to the Montreal traders.
The North West Company and the Hudson's Bay Company built rival posts side by side at Rocky Mountain House in 1799, trading especially with the Piikani. David Thompson used the post as his base for crossing the Rockies. When Thompson's brigade used Howse Pass to trade guns to the Ktunaxa, the Blackfoot-speaking nations blocked it, forcing traders north to Athabasca Pass.
A smallpox epidemic in 1869–70 killed several Blackfoot leaders; Crowfoot (Isapo-muxika) emerged as one of the three head chiefs of the Siksika. By the early 1870s American traders from Montana sold whisky to the Blackfoot at posts near the forks of the Bow and Belly rivers. Rupert's Land, including Alberta, passed to Canada in 1870.
1874 – 1890
The Mounted Police arrived, Treaties 6 and 7 were signed and the conflict of 1885 reached Frog Lake.
Sent west to stop the whisky trade, Assistant Commissioner James Macleod's North-West Mounted Police established Fort Macleod on the Oldman River by the end of October 1874, at a site chosen by Métis scout Jerry Potts. The police worked to suppress the whisky trade and build relations with the Blackfoot nations.
Cree and Stoney leaders signed Treaty 6 near Fort Carlton and Fort Pitt in 1876, with many later adhesions. In Alberta it covers the area between the Athabasca and South Saskatchewan rivers, east of the mountains. It is the only numbered treaty with a 'medicine chest' clause and a promise of help in times of famine.
Lieutenant-Governor David Laird invited the Blackfoot, Blood, Piegan, Sarcee (Tsuut'ina) and Stoney nations to negotiate at Blackfoot Crossing on the Bow River. After an all-night council the chiefs agreed, and Crowfoot spoke for the Blackfoot nation; the treaty was signed on September 22, 1877, with a further signing at Fort Macleod on December 4. It promised reserves of one square mile per family of five, $12 at signing and $5 annuities.
Scrip issued under the Manitoba Act led about two-thirds of Manitoba's Métis to leave within 20 years of 1870. Many moved west and settled near the Catholic mission settlements around Fort Edmonton and along the South Saskatchewan River.
St. Joseph's (Dunbow) Industrial School opened near Calgary in 1884, followed by schools at Grouard (1894), Ermineskin at Hobbema, now Maskwacis (1895), and Blue Quills (1898), among more than two dozen in the province. Blue Quills, the last listed here to close, operated until 1990.
⚖️ Officially acknowledged
Officially acknowledgedPrime Minister Stephen Harper apologized on June 11, 2008, for the residential school system; Pope Francis apologized at Maskwacis on July 25, 2022, for Catholic involvement.
Big Bear's band, near starvation after the bison disappeared, was camped near Frog Lake, where Indian agent Thomas Quinn was resented for his harshness. Warriors led by war chief Wandering Spirit and Big Bear's son Ayimâsis took the settlement, and nine men, including Quinn and two priests, were shot. About 70 people were taken captive; Big Bear had tried to prevent the violence.
1891 – 1919
Immigrants filled the parkland, Treaty 8 opened the north and Alberta became a province in 1905.
More than 170,000 people of Ukrainian origin came to Canada between 1891 and 1914, drawn by free 160-acre homesteads. Most came from Galicia and Bukovyna and settled in blocs, creating a distinctive cultural landscape stretching southeast from Edmonton across Saskatchewan into Manitoba.
With prospectors heading north, Canada sent commissioners to Lesser Slave Lake, where talks began on June 20 and the treaty was signed on June 21, 1899, followed by adhesions across the north. Unlike earlier treaties it was spurred by mining rather than farming. A separate commission issued scrip to Métis in the treaty area.
At noon on September 1, 1905, George Bulyea was sworn in as lieutenant-governor and Alberta became a province, named after Princess Louise Caroline Alberta, a daughter of Queen Victoria. Alexander Rutherford became premier the next day. The 1906 census counted 185,412 people.
African Americans fleeing segregation in Oklahoma founded communities such as Wildwood, Keystone (now Breton), Campsie and Amber Valley, about 170 kilometres north of Edmonton. Their arrival in 1909–10 triggered a backlash, and in 1911 Interior Minister Frank Oliver drafted an Order in Council barring 'any immigrants belonging to the Negro race' for one year; Prime Minister Laurier approved it but the government did not enact an open ban.
⚖️ Established fact
Established factInstead of an open ban, the federal government used other measures: border medical examiners were told to scrutinize Black immigrants for grounds to exclude them and were quietly offered a bonus for each one rejected.
On May 14, 1914, the Dingman No. 1 well struck wet gas deep under Turner Valley southwest of Calgary, setting off a boom. Turner Valley became Canada's largest oil and gas producer.
A methane fire and coal dust explosion in the Hillcrest mine in the Crowsnest Pass killed 189 of the 237 men who went underground that morning. The town had about 1,000 people, and the spark that ignited the gas was never determined.
During the First World War Canada interned 8,579 'enemy aliens,' including many civilian labourers from Austria-Hungary. In Banff, internees were held at Castle Mountain from July 1915 and at Cave and Basin from that November, building roads and clearing land under rough conditions until the camp closed in July 1917.
⚖️ Established fact
Established factThe internment is documented by Parks Canada; a federal National Historical Recognition Program funded the Cave and Basin exhibit about the internment operations of 1914–1920.
1920 – 1946
Alberta women won the Persons Case while the province sterilized thousands under a eugenics law.
Under a 1928 law, Alberta sterilized more than 2,800 people deemed 'mentally defective,' many of them people with disabilities, between 1928 and 1970. Leilani Muir, sterilized after failing an IQ test at a provincial training school, sued the province successfully in the mid-1990s, and more than 700 other victims followed.
⚖️ Officially acknowledged
Officially acknowledgedIn November 1999 Premier Ralph Klein expressed regret for the sterilizations and the province offered about $82 million to 246 victims; about 600 others had settled in 1998.
In 1927 Emily Murphy, Alberta's first female judge, and four other Alberta women, Henrietta Muir Edwards, Nellie McClung, Louise McKinney and Irene Parlby, asked whether women were 'persons' eligible for the Senate. The Supreme Court said no, but on October 18, 1929, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London overruled it. October 18 is now Persons Day.
Ottawa had kept control of Crown lands and resources in the Prairie provinces since 1905. An agreement transferring them to Alberta was signed in Ottawa on December 14, 1929, and took effect the following year.
1947 – 1985
Leduc and the oil sands transformed the economy, and First Nations pushed back against assimilation.
After decades of disappointing drilling, Imperial Oil's Leduc No. 1 blew in south of Edmonton on February 13, 1947. The Leduc field was the largest yet found, and a second major field at Redwater soon followed. The Interprovincial Pipeline to Superior, Wisconsin, was completed in 1950.
Researchers such as Karl Clark had worked on separating bitumen from the Athabasca oil sands since the 1920s. Great Canadian Oil Sands, incorporated in 1953, opened its plant north of Fort McMurray in 1967 with financing and leadership from the Sun Oil Company.
In response to the federal government's 1969 White Paper proposing to abolish the Indian Act and end treaties, the Indian Association of Alberta produced Citizens Plus, known as the Red Paper, in 1970. It argued that the treaties are permanent and that First Nations' voices must be heard.
Alberta created the Heritage Savings Trust Fund in 1976 to save a portion of its non-renewable resource revenue for the future.
1986 – 2014
A deadly tornado, the Olympics and the 2013 floods marked these decades.
A tornado that first touched down in Leduc County as a thin funnel tore through Edmonton in the afternoon, killing 27 people, injuring about 600 and causing about $300 million in damage.
After several earlier bids, Calgary became the first Canadian city to host the Olympic Winter Games in 1988. Figure skaters Brian Orser and Elizabeth Manley won silver medals.
Heavy rain sent rivers over their banks across southern Alberta in June 2013, inundating Calgary, Canmore and High River and swamping the Stampede grounds. Bodies were recovered near High River as the province faced its worst flooding in decades.
2015 – today
Wildfires, land claim settlements, a papal apology and a vote on Alberta's place in Canada.
Rachel Notley's New Democrats won a majority government, a result CBC called a massive shock that turned Canadian politics on its head. Brian Jean's Wildrose Party became the Official Opposition.
A wildfire that began on May 1 southwest of the city entered Fort McMurray on May 3, forcing the evacuation of nearly 90,000 people. Thousands of homes were destroyed; no one died directly from the fire, but two teenagers died in a highway crash during the evacuation. Residents began returning in June.
After decades of failed talks, standoffs and arrests, Canada, Alberta and the Lubicon Lake Band announced a settlement setting aside 246 square kilometres near Little Buffalo, with $95 million from Ottawa and $18 million from Alberta, plus funds for roads and housing.
Kapawe'no First Nation announced that ground-penetrating radar and a drone had identified 169 potential graves at the site of the former St. Bernard's (Grouard) residential school, about 370 kilometres northwest of Edmonton. Parish burial records indicated children who died at the school were buried in unmarked graves.
⚖️ Officially acknowledged
Officially acknowledgedThe radar results identify potential burials; the sources reviewed do not report excavation. Canada apologized for residential schools in 2008.
At Blackfoot Crossing, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Chief Ouray Crowfoot announced a $1.3-billion settlement of Siksika Nation's land claims. Canada acknowledged it had broken its Treaty 7 promise by wrongfully taking almost half of the reserve, including some of its best farmland, to sell to settlers.
⚖️ Officially acknowledged
Officially acknowledgedCanada stated on June 2, 2022, that it 'broke its Blackfoot Treaty (Treaty 7) promise and wrongfully took almost half of Siksika Nation's reserve land.'
At the site of one of Canada's largest residential schools, Pope Francis apologized for members of the Catholic Church who co-operated with the residential school system, saying forced assimilation destroyed cultures and severed families. Thousands of Indigenous people, many of them survivors, gathered at Maskwacis, about 100 kilometres south of Edmonton.
Wildfires forced the evacuation of Jasper National Park and swept into the town of Jasper in July 2024. Parks Canada reported that 358 of the town's 1,113 structures were destroyed, mostly homes.
In a referendum called by Premier Danielle Smith's government, 74.9 per cent of voters rejected starting a process toward a binding vote on separation, with 70.4 per cent turnout. Five immigration questions passed narrowly and four constitutional questions failed; official results were released 10 days after the vote.
About this timeline
Blackfoot Confederacy, Tsuut'ina, Stoney Nakoda, Cree, Dene and Dane-zaa peoples lived in Alberta for thousands of years, hunting bison at sites like Head-Smashed-In. The fur trade, smallpox, the Mounted Police and Treaties 6, 7 and 8 reshaped the region before it became a province in 1905. Oil turned Alberta into an energy powerhouse after 1947, while floods, wildfires, land claim settlements and a 2026 referendum on separation shaped its recent history.
6 moments on this page carry a government record note.
FAQ
Alberta became a province at noon on September 1, 1905, with Edmonton as its capital.
It is named after Princess Louise Caroline Alberta, the fourth daughter of Queen Victoria and wife of the Marquis of Lorne, Governor General from 1878 to 1883.
Treaty 7 (1877) covers the south, Treaty 6 (1876) the centre, and Treaty 8 (1899) the north; Treaty 4 reaches into the southeastern corner.
Dingman No. 1 struck gas at Turner Valley on May 14, 1914, but the modern oil industry began when Leduc No. 1 blew in on February 13, 1947.
No. In the October 19, 2026, referendum, 74.9 per cent voted against beginning a process toward a binding separation vote.
Written from the sources linked on each moment: the Canadian Encyclopedia, the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, Parks Canada, Library and Archives Canada, the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, provincial and city archives, and others. Where governments acted wrongly, we say so and note whether it has been officially acknowledged, is established by the record, or is disputed. Spotted an error? Tell us and we will fix it.
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