Hinton, Alberta

Hinton is a town in the foothills of Alberta, Canada, with a population of 9,817. It is in Yellowhead County, 81 km (50 mi) northeast of Jasper and about 284 km (176 mi) 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.