Tucked just 0.3 kilometres north of Highway 36 in central Alberta, Spedden is a hamlet situated within Smoky Lake County. It lies roughly 106 kilometres southwest of Cold Lake, placing it in a quiet stretch of Alberta’s parkland region. The community was previously known as Cache Lake before taking on its current name, which honours one of the original surveyors who worked in the area and passed away there in 1919.
That same year, 1919, brought significant change to the area when Spedden received a Canadian National rail line connection. Momentum continued as residents of St. Paul pushed the line a further 50 kilometres through Ashmont and on to their locality before the year was out. The hamlet recorded a population of 56 in the 1991 Census of Population conducted by Statistics Canada, reflecting its character as a small, close-knit rural community. Spedden represents the kind of quiet hamlet that quietly shaped the agricultural and transportation history of central Alberta without drawing much wider attention to itself.