Fort Mcmurray Travel Guide

Introduction

Located 435km (270 miles) northeast of Edmonton along a mostly two-lane -- and heavily traveled -- highway, Fort McMurray is the heart of Alberta's current oil boom. A dusty outpost by anyone's measure, it's the fastest-growing city in a province of fast-growing cities; in 2006, the population of Fort McMurray was about 65,000 people; by 2012, it's expected to almost double, to 120,000.

That would be impressive all by itself, but especially so when you consider that Fort McMurray was only 25,000 people in the mid-90s. This is boomtown, and there's one reason for it: oil. The oil sands are no sudden discovery, even if the wealth they now beget is relatively new; when settlers first arrived here in the late 18th century, the native Cree people used the mucky bitumen to seal their canoes. People have been trying to turn a profit from the thick, oily glop for nearly a century; the problem has always been not that it's impossible to extract the oil from the muck, but rather that...