Nestled along the Oldman River in southern Alberta, Fort Macleod sits within the Municipal District of Willow Creek No. 26 and carries a history that stretches back to the early days of the North-West Mounted Police. The original fort was constructed on October 18, 1874, as a 70-by-70-metre square structure on a river peninsula, with men’s quarters on the east side, Mounties’ quarters on the west, and facilities such as hospitals, stores, and guardrooms housed at the south end. Stables and a blacksmith’s shop occupied the north end. After the fort relocated to its present site in 1884, a town gradually took shape around it, incorporated as the Municipality of the Town of Macleod in 1892 and officially renamed Fort Macleod in 1952 to reflect what residents had long been calling it.
The town’s fortunes have risen and fallen dramatically over the decades. When agricultural settlement and the Canadian Pacific Railway arrived, Macleod experienced a significant boom, becoming a CPR divisional point. A destructive fire in 1906 wiped out most of the wooden downtown, triggering a period of rebuilding in brick and sandstone that lasted from 1906 to 1912. That growth came to an abrupt halt when the CPR shifted its divisional point and roughly 200 jobs to Lethbridge in 1912, leaving the local economy badly weakened. The town declared bankruptcy in 1924 and stagnated for decades, which paradoxically preserved its historic streetscape. By 1982, Fort Macleod’s downtown had been designated Alberta’s first Provincial Historic Area, and Heritage Canada launched a Main Street Restoration Project to protect its sandstone and brick buildings, some dating to 1878. The Museum of the North-West Mounted Police is located here, honouring the town’s origins as the second headquarters of the NWMP after Fort Livingstone was abandoned in 1876. The town’s namesake is Colonel James Macleod, who served as Commissioner of the North-West Mounted Police. As of the 2021 census, Fort Macleod had a population of 3,297 residents living across a land area of 22.54 square kilometres, giving it a population density of approximately 146.3 people per square kilometre, a notable increase from the 2,967 residents recorded in 2016.