[5] Mill Woods is adjacent to three other residential areas including The Meadows to the east across 34 Street, and Southeast Edmonton and Ellerslie to the south and southwest respectively across Anthony Henday Drive.

The development of Mill Woods began in the early 1970s and was one of the first areas of Edmonton to move away from the grid system.

The Mill Woods subdivision is situated in land that was once earmarked for an Indian reserve to belong to the Papaschase,a Métis-Cree band that signed treaty between 1876 and 1891.

[6] The City of Edmonton began assembling land in this area in 1970 as a means of addressing the shortage of and rising cost of serviced land in the vicinity of Edmonton, and City administrators prepared a plan to develop the area.

The plan envisioned having a population of approximately 120,000 people at full build-out, a number the area currently contains.

[5] Southeastern areas of Mill Woods suffered heavy damage from the Edmonton tornado in 1987.

[9] Mill Woods comprises a town centre community (Mill Woods Town Centre)[10] and eight surrounding communities[5] (Burnewood, Knottwood, Lakewood, Millbourne, Millhurst, Ridgewood, Southwood, and Woodvale), which are each divided into multiple neighbourhoods.

Together, these three neighbourhoods form a largely business and service core intended to allow Mill Woods to function as a self-contained community.

It contains Edmonton Police Service's Southeast Division headquarters; there is a City run Recreation Centre, and is home to Mill Woods Park.