Established under the 1938 Metis Population Betterment Act as a relief measure for the province's impoverished Métis people,[3] the heavily timbered Marlboro settlement was found to contain no land suitable for agricultural purposes.

A royal commission was formed to investigate the living conditions of Alberta's "half-breeds" (as the Métis were known), who was then squatting on road allowances with no ready sources of cash income, or trapping in remote areas without access to education or health services.

Farm colonies, in which the Métis themselves would provide most of the physical labor, would be a suitably inexpensive relief scheme for the cash-strapped Alberta government to implement.

[4] Following these recommendations, the 1938 Metis Population Betterment Act enabled unoccupied Crown land to be set aside for the creation of new Métis settlements.

Caslan (now Buffalo Lake) was the final addition, reserved for Métis veterans returning from World War II before being thrown open to general settlement in 1951.