Fort McMurray, urban and economic center of Wood Buffalo Regional Municipality in northeastern Alberta, Canada. Fort McMurray is situated at the confluence of the Athabasca and Clearwater rivers. Formerly an incorporated city, Fort McMurray merged in 1995 with a number of surrounding communities and a vast unincorporated region to create Wood Buffalo Regional Municipality. While the region is huge at 61,566 sq km (23,771 sq mi), nearly all of its 35,213 residents (1996) live in Fort McMurray.
The community's economy is dominated by the mining of oil sands, also called tar sands, from the Athabasca Oil Sands deposit, which is the largest known deposit of crude oil in the world. Fort McMurray's extraction and refining operations provided one-fifth of Canada's energy resources in the 1990s. Manufacturing, construction, retail, and tourism are also important industries. Fort McMurray is served by the Fort McMurray Airport. It is also home to Keyano College, which provides unique programs of study related to the oil sands industry. Attractions include Heritage Park, which is home to a museum that depicts the history of Fort McMurray, and the Oil Sands Discovery Centre, which explains the history and technology of the oil sands industry.
