1719: Wa-pa-su, of the Cree First Nations, brought a sample of the oil sands to the Hudson Bay post at Fort Churchill. The sands were described as "that gum or pitch which flows out of the banks of that river." This was the first time the now famous oil sands were mentioned in Canadian history.

1778: Peter Pond is the first white man to enter the rich Athabasca fur-trading country via the Methe Portage and Clearwater River. He describes the heavy oil outcroppings along the river and notes the Aboriginal People's use of the material to waterproof canoes.

1790: Explorer Alexander MacKenzie provides the first recorded description of the Athabasca tar sands as "bituminous fountains" up to 20 feet deep.

1870: Henry John Moberly established a Hudson's Bay Company post at the confluence of the Clearwater and Athabasca Rivers. He named the post Fort McMurray, after Chief Factor William McMurray

1875: A Geological Survey of Canada expedition examined the rivers draining into Lake Athabasca. John Macoun, a botanist, recorded his observation of water naturally washing oil out of the oil sands that is the essence of today's technology for extracting bitumen from oil sands. His main impression was that the "tar" wasn't mixed with mineral matter, rather that the tar flowed through it.

1882: Dr. Robert Bell of the Geological Survey of Canada arrives to survey the Athabasca area, and he reports on the oil sands.

1883: The separation of bitumen from oil sand with the use of water was first attempted by G.C. Hoffman of the Geological Survey of Canada. He reported that the bitumen separated readily from the sand.

1906: Count Alfred von Hammerstein drills for oil in the Fort McMurray area, instead he found salt deposits at the mouth of the Horse River. He later formed the Athabasca Oil and Asphalt Company.

1912: An oil sands boom begins in Fort McMurray with lots selling for $200 or more.

1913: Between 1913 and 1914 the Northern Alberta Exploration Company drilled 6 shallow wells at the confluence of the Horse and Athabasca Rivers. Although they drilled through tar sand layers, they found that the salt beneath these layers would be the most likely commercial product at that site.

1913: A survey of the Athabasca country was conducted by Sydney C. Ells of the Mines Branch. He saw the potential for using asphalt reserves as a road-surfacing material. Sydney Ells visited 10 plant sites in the United States in 1913, and discovered that a plant in California separated bitumen from the sand with hot water.

1915: Based on his findings during his survey, Ells convinced the Mines Branch to grant him funds to conduct a paving experiment using oil sands supplied from the Horse River Reserve. The experiment was a joint federal-provincial-municipal venture in the city of Edmonton and the results of the experiment were satisfactory. In January Ells was invited by the Mellon Institute of Industrial Research, Pittsburg, to study the problem of separating the oil from the sand. Eventually three types of flotation cells were constructed and extraction was attempted by use of heated water both with and without the addition of reagents.

1915: J.D. Tait of Vancouver drilled a well in the Athabasca area that reached a depth of 1,000 feet.