Nestled at the crossroads of Highway 43 and Highway 22 – also known as the Cowboy Trail – Mayerthorpe sits in central Alberta roughly 120 kilometres northwest of Edmonton. The town is fully surrounded by Lac Ste. Anne County and falls within Alberta’s Census Division No. 13. Its name has an interesting dual origin: the post office, established in 1915, was named in honour of R. I. Mayer, the community’s first postmaster, while “Thorpe” derives from an Old English word meaning hamlet or village. Mayerthorpe first incorporated as a village on March 5, 1927, and later achieved town status on March 20, 1961, just over 34 years afterwards.
According to the 2021 Census conducted by Statistics Canada, Mayerthorpe had a population of 1,343 residents living in 551 of its 615 private dwellings, representing a modest increase of 1.7 percent compared to the 2016 count of 1,320. The town covers a land area of 4.39 square kilometres, yielding a population density of approximately 305.9 people per square kilometre. The community has experienced some notable events throughout its history, including the tragic deaths of four RCMP officers on March 3, 2005, a fire that destroyed the local arena on July 29, 2008, and a string of suspicious fires in 2016 that took down a CN trestle bridge – which was subsequently rebuilt in about twenty days. The rebuilt arena, now called the Mayerthorpe Exhibition Centre, reopened in 2011 following three years of planning and fundraising, and today serves as the home ice for the Whitecourt Wild Senior “AA” hockey team of the North Central Hockey League. The community is also served by a local weekly publication, the Mayerthorpe Freelancer.