Hinton is a town in the foothills of Alberta, Canada, with a population of 9,817. It is in Yellowhead County, 81 km (50 mi) northeast of Jasper and about 284 km (176 mi) west of Alberta's capital city, Edmonton, at the intersection of the Yellowhead and Bighorn Highways. Situated on the south bank of the Athabasca River, Hinton is on Treaty 6 territory.

The Town of Hinton is named after its railway station, which in turn was named after William Hinton, a manager for the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway at the time it was built, in 1911. The area has been on Indigenous travel routes for thousands of years, and a fur trade route beginning in 1810. Its first homesteads were established at the end of the 19th Century. Aside from a coal boom in the 1930s, the population around the Hinton station remained low until 1956 when Northwest Pulp and Power built a pulp mill. The new town, with a population over 3,500, was incorporated in 1958.

The area around present day Hinton deglaciated 12,800–11,600 BCE. Archeological sites up the Athabasca River from Hinton show repeated habitation from 8,000 BCE until approximately 1500 AD. Other sites around Hinton demonstrate that the foothills were also an important travel and trade corridor for Indigenous peoples for thousands of years prior to European contact, dating to at least 7,000 BCE.

Before Europeans arrived in North America, the upper Athabasca region was relatively sparsely inhabited by groups speaking Athabascan/Dene languages (including the Tsuut'ina, Tsa'tinne, and Tse'khene), Siouan languages (specifically Nakoda) and, potentially, Salish languages (such as Secwepemctsín, now present west of the Rockies). European settlement in eastern Canada resulted in waves of western migration of Indigenous groups in the 18th and 19th centuries including Algonquian language-speaking groups (in particular Woodland Cree and Salteaux), Iroquoian speakers, and Métis.

Around the start of the 19th century, furs supplied by these groups, and a desire to access the Columbia River, encouraged the Hudson's Bay Company and North West Company to establish trade and supply posts in the vicinity of the Divide. David Thompson's guide Thomas the Iroquois led a brigade over Athabasca Pass, establishing the York Factory Express. Company employees would continue to pass through the area on the Athabasca River for the next half century, primarily to transport correspondence and move personnel between districts. The Jasper House post also collected furs traded by the local Indigenous people.

This population, estimated to be about 200 in 1836, was a cultural mix of Iroquois, Cree, Dane-zaa, and Métis. Present-day Hinton was within the area that they hunted, travelled, and camped: the Miette-Athabasca confluence to the west, the upper Smoky River to the north, and Lac Ste. Anne to the east. Cache Percotte Creek, just east of present-day Hinton may have been named after a camp of smallpox sufferers travelling to Lac Ste. Anne during the 1870 epidemic. (A 19th century French Canadian word for smallpox was picotte.)

In 1888, Jack Gregg established a trading post at Prairie/Maskuta Creek (from maskotêw: Plains Cree for prairie), 3 kilometres (1.9 mi) southwest of present day Hinton, to serve travellers on the overland route between Edmonton and Jasper. In 1894 he started a homestead in the same area.

Jasper Forest Park (renamed Jasper National Park in 1930) was established in 1907; in 1909, the government bought out and evicted Métis homesteaders. Among those removed from the new park was the family of John Moberly. They were given $1,000 and a quarter section next to their cousins, the Greggs' homestead. They and a handful of others homesteaded around present-day Hinton ranching, hunting, trapping, and guiding.