Under the Chinook Arch

Cayley, a hamlet in southern Alberta’s Foothills County, is approximately 73 kilometres south of Calgary, 13 kilometres south of High River and 1.2 kilometres west of Highway 2 on Range Road 290. It has a history that dates back to the late 19th century. The community was named after the Hon. Hugh St. Quentin Cayley, a barrister and the publisher of the Calgary Herald in 1884, who also represented Calgary in the Northwest Territories legislature from 1886 to 1894.

In the early days, Cayley was only stockyards in 1892 when the Calgary-Mekastoe (Ft. MacLeod) railroad went past it. Wickens opened a post office and store in 1903. It grew quickly, and was a busy place before the Aldersyde-Lethbridge railroad was built. Soon it had a hotel, lumberyard, and meat market, and dozens of other shops. In 1904, Cayley became a village. The community originally contained at least seven grain elevators; all have been demolished. Cayley is home to a Hutterite colony and a colony school. In 2001, two Cayley Colony girls were the first students from an Alberta colony school to write provincial diploma exams and graduate from high school.

In the 2021 Census of Population conducted by Statistics Canada, Cayley had a population of 414 living in 166 of its 170 total private dwellings, a change of 9.8% from its 2016 population of 377. With a land area of 0.62 km 2 (0.24 sq mi), it had a population density of 667.7/km 2 (1,729.4/sq mi) in 2021. As you drive towards Cayley, heading south on the old Highway 2A, also known as Range Road 290, you pass pumpjacks nodding like dazed donkeys, gas pumping stations and massive cattle feed lots.