Hinton is a town in the foothills of Alberta, Canada, with a population of 9,817. It is in Yellowhead County, northeast of Jasper and about west of Alberta's capital city, Edmonton, at the intersection of the Yellowhead and Bighorn Highways. Situated on the south bank of the Athabasca River, Hinton is on Treaty 6 territory.
The Town of Hinton is named after its railway station, which in turn was named after William Hinton, a manager for the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway at the time it was built, in 1911. The area has been on Indigenous travel routes for thousands of years, and a fur trade route beginning in 1810. Its first homesteads were established at the end of the 19th Century. Aside from a coal boom in the 1930s, the population around the Hinton station remained low until 1956 when Northwest Pulp and Power built a pulp mill. The new town, with a population over 3,500, was incorporated in 1958.
History
Early habitation The area around present day Hinton deglaciated 12,800–11,600 BCE. Archeological sites up the Athabasca River from Hinton show repeated habitation from 8,000 BCE until approximately 1500 AD. Other sites around Hinton demonstrate that the foothills were also an important travel and trade corridor for Indigenous peoples for thousands of years prior to European contact, dating to at least 7,000 BCE.
Before Europeans arrived in North America, the upper Athabasca region was relatively sparsely inhabited by groups speaking Athabascan/Dene languages (including the Tsuut'ina, Tsa'tinne, and Tse'khene), Siouan languages (specifically Nakoda) and, potentially, Salish languages (such as Secwepemctsín, now present west of the Rockies). European settlement in eastern Canada resulted in waves of western migration of Indigenous groups in the 18th and 19th centuries including Algonquian language-speaking groups (in particular Woodland Cree and Salteaux), Iroquoian speakers, and Métis.
Around the start of the 19th century, furs supplied by these groups, and a desire to access the Columbia River, encouraged the Hudson's Bay Company and North West Company to establish trade and supply posts in the vicinity of the Divide. David Thompson's guide Thomas the Iroquois led a brigade over Athabasca Pass, establishing the York Factory Express. Company employees would continue to pass through the area on the Athabasca River for the next half century, primarily to transport correspondence and move personnel between districts. The Jasper House post also collected furs traded by the local Indigenous people.
This population, estimated to be about 200 in 1836, was a cultural mix of Iroquois, Cree, Dane-zaa, and Métis. Present-day Hinton was within the area that they hunted, travelled, and camped: the Miette-Athabasca confluence to the west, the upper Smoky River to the north, and Lac Ste. Anne to the east. Cache Percotte Creek, just east of present-day Hinton may have been named after a camp of smallpox sufferers travelling to Lac Ste. Anne during the 1870 epidemic. (A 19th century French Canadian word for smallpox was .)
In 1888, Jack Gregg established a trading post at Prairie/Maskuta Creek (from : Plains Cree for prairie), southwest of present day Hinton, to serve travellers on the overland route between Edmonton and Jasper. In 1894 he started a homestead in the same area.Gainer, Brenda, and Parks Canada. 1981. The Human History of Jasper National Park, Alberta. [Ottawa]: Parks Canada. p. 78–82
Jasper Forest Park (renamed Jasper National Park in 1930) was established in 1907; in 1909, the government bought out and evicted Métis homesteaders. Among those removed from the new park was the family of John Moberly. They were given $1,000 and a quarter section next to their cousins, the Greggs' homestead. They and a handful of others homesteaded around present-day Hinton ranching, hunting, trapping, and guiding.
Railroads The construction of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway (GTPR) saw the establishment of a construction camp at the mouth of Prairie Creek at the Athabasca River in 1908. A steel trestle bridge was built over the creek and is still in use by the Canadian National Railway today. In 1911, the GTPR built a station house at mile 978 west of Winnipeg. The station was named after William Hinton, a Vice President and General Manager for the GTPR. Mary Schäffer, on her 1911 government-sponsored trip to Maligne Lake, arrived at the end of the line in Hinton in June. The Prairie Creek construction camp was just about to break up and relocate to Moose Lake to support the next stage of construction from Hinton to Tête Jaune Cache. Schäffer wrote that they were glad to leave the, "rubbishy little town to finish its pathetic history."
The Canadian Northern Railway (CNoR) established a parallel line between Edmonton and Tête Jaune Cache. The CNoR ran just north of the GTPR line at Hinton, establishing the stations of Dalehurst ( northeast of Hinton Station), Bliss ( northeast of Hinton Station), and Dyke (now Entrance; southwest of Hinton Station). In 1917 when the heavier gauge GTP rail was dismantled and sent to Europe for the war effort, trains used the CNoR line and Dalehurst became the postal station for the Hinton area; Dyke served as its communications centre.
The Canadian National Railway became the owner of both the CNoR and GTPR, and various portions of both lines were used by the new railway.The Grand Trunk Railway Acquisition Act, 1919, S.C. 1919 (2nd sess.), c. 17 , supplemented by An Act to confirm the Agreement dated the eighth day of March, 1920, between His Majesty the King and the Grand Trunk Railway Company of Canada for the acquisition by His Majesty of the capital stock of the said Grand Trunk Railway Company, except the four per cent guaranteed stock, S.C. 1920, c. 13 In 1927, the company moved the track back to the better-constructed GTPR grade between Obed and Entrance, and the Hinton station reopened.Rutherford, R. L. (6 March 1925). Geology of the Foothills Belt Between McLeod and Athabasca Rivers, Alberta (Report). p. 3. Retrieved 2 May 2025.
Coal boom and bust
The coal-fired steam engines of the railroads both opened access to, and provided a market for, coal from a thick seam underlying the Hinton area. The Coal Branch was completed in 1912 and created work camps such as Mountain Park, Cadomin, Luscar, Robb, Mercoal, and Coalspur, which grew into communities with populations in the hundreds, surpassing Hinton's. By the late 1920s, the region contributed 22% of Alberta's total coal production.
Closer to the Hinton station, prospectors had explored coal indications at the mouths of Happy and Prairie (Maskuta) Creeks, but as late as 1925 they were not considered practical to exploit. However, by 1928, Jasper Collieries Ltd. operated the Drinnan coal mine on the eastern end of present-day Hinton. Named after R. G. Drinnan, who discovered coal during a 1910 expedition to the area, it produced nearly 2 million tons of coal before closing in 1940. Another, smaller mine opened a short distance southwest in 1943.
On the west side of Hinton, Frank Seabolt, R. W. Jones, and Harry King opened the Hinton Collieries near Happy Creek in 1931. Seabolt had been prospecting in the area for some time while he worked supplying timber to the Mountain Park mine. He also served as the Drinnan postmaster, and in 1916 he bought Jack Gregg's ranch (and renamed it the Bar F Ranch). Seabolt, King, and Jones built and operated all the major businesses in the hamlet of Hinton in the 1930s.
The Hinton Collieries operated for about 10 years despite the Great Depression, which temporarily reduced demand for coal. At 4:30 pm on 30 March 1938 an explosion in the Hinton Collieries killed five miners and wounded five more. The mine's manager L. G. Chavignaud was found to have breached several provisions of the Alberta Mines Act and fined a total of $200. In 1940, Chavignaud's hiring as fire boss at the Mountain Park mine sparked a 3-week strike. On 22 January 1940, another miner was killed, and five injured by a runaway mine car. The Hinton Collieries were abandoned in 1941 and reported flooded in 1944.
Without the Hinton mines, a significant portion of the population left to find work elsewhere. Those that remained relied on forestry, trapping, outfitting, and some oil and gas exploration during the war years. The coal branch communities to the south continued producing through the 1940s. However, as the railways switched from coal to diesel locomotives, these mines too began closing, beginning with Mountain Park in 1950 and ending with Luscar in 1956.
Getting a pulp mill Frank E. Ruben, the president of Northern Canadian Oil, had the idea of using the uneconomic coal and abundant nearby timber to produce Kraft pulp. Northern Canadian Oil purchased the Bryan Mountain Coal Company on the Coal Branch near Robb. The company had also formed a subsidiary called Northwest Pulp and Power, which, on 8 June 1951, entered into an agreement with the Government of Alberta. The province agreed to lease up to of timber rights in the vicinity of Yates, just east of Edson, on condition that the company begin construction of a $3.5-million pulp mill near Yates by May 1952, and finish it by May 1954.Order in Council 836-51. "Alberta Gazette 1951", 1951, (CU14941083) by Alberta. corporate. Courtesy of Alberta Law Collection, Libraries and Cultural Resources Digital Collections, University of Calgary. Pp. 803–811 Northwest Pulp and Power defaulted on the agreement.
In April 1954, Ruben returned with business partners from New York-based St. Regis Paper to revive the plan for an Edson area pulp mill. St. Regis and Northwest Pulp and Power would each put up $5 million and finance an additional $20 million estimated to be required for the mill. Each company would own 50% of the venture, with Ruben Chairman of the Board and Roy K. Ferguson of St. Regis the president. On 1 September 1954, North Western Pulp and Power entered into a new agreement with the province to construct a pulp mill on the McLeod River in the Edson area. The updated terms now included reserving of pulpwood in exchange for completion of a $15-million mill by 1957 and expansion by 1962.Order in Council 1264-54. "Alberta Gazette 1954 part 1", 1954, (CU11090979) by Alberta. corporate. Courtesy of Alberta Law Collection, Libraries and Cultural Resources Digital Collections, University of Calgary. p. 1716 The company then announced it had purchased a site for the mill and would begin construction the following spring.
However, in early 1955, Ruben announced a pause on the project pending the results of certain tests. In fact, the company had discovered that they would not have sufficient water for the mill's effluent at the planned Edson location. That March, Northwest Pulp and Power announced that it would instead build the mill near Hinton, where the larger Athabasca River would provide ample water. The agreement with St. Regis was that Reuben’s Northern Canadian Oil would supply the power, but St. Regis, which was in charge of designing and operating the mill, insisted that the power source be changed from coal to gas, pointing out that coal’s combustion products risked spoiling the bleached pulp. Northern Canadian Oil had to construct a new pipeline from Wabamun to Hinton at a cost of $5 million. The recently-purchased Bryan Mountain Coal Company, whose 250 employees had been out of work pending construction of the mill's power plant, never reopened.