Maple Creek is a town in the Cypress Hills of southwest Saskatchewan, Canada. It is surrounded by the Rural Municipality of Maple Creek No. 111. The population was 2,084 at the 2016 Census. The town is southeast of Medicine Hat, Alberta, and north of the Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park on Highway 21 and south of the Trans-Canada Highway. Maple Creek runs along the west side of town. The administrative headquarters of the Nekaneet Cree Nation is southeast of Maple Creek. History After the North-West Mounted Police had been established at Fort Walsh, settlers began to explore the Cypress Hills area, living along the creeks and doing small-scale ranching. The Department of the Interior was operating a First Nations farm on the Maple Creek, a few miles south from the present town site. In 1882-1883 the First Nations (mainly Cree, Saulteaux, and Assiniboine) were moved to Qu'Appelle, and the farm was then operated by Major Shurtleff, an ex-Mounted Policeman, and George Wood, his brother-in-law. In the winter of 1882, a Canadian Pacific Railway construction crew of 12 decided to winter where the town of Maple Creek now stands. This marked the establishment of Maple Creek. In June 2010, a flood submerged some of the town when Maple Creek overflowed its banks. The same flood hit much of southwestern Saskatchewan and southern Alberta and even destroyed a portion of the Trans-Canada Highway. Heritage sites There are two designated municipal heritage Properties in Maple Creek: The W. R. Orr Heritage Building was constructed in 1910 and over its history it has housed the Union Bank of Canada; W.R. Orr Law Office; Royal Bank of Canada; Bank of Montreal; Burnett & Orr Law Office. The St. Mary's Anglican Church was constructed in 1909 in the Romanesque style. The church also contains a vestry, narthex, and octagonal belfry with steeple that was added in 1928. Demographics In the 2021 Census of Population conducted by Statistics Canada, Maple Creek had a population of living in of its total private dwellings, a change of from its 2016 population of . With a land area of , it had a population density of in 2021. Climate Maple Creek experiences a semi-arid climate (Köppen climate classification BSk). With the exception of southwestern Alberta, winters in Maple Creek are typically warmer than those in the adjacent plain region of southern Alberta and Saskatchewan, being a convergence point for Chinook winds