It is located along the Canadian Pacific Kansas City railway between the Trans-Canada Highway and the Bow River, upstream from Ghost Lake.

[1] They founded the mission at the request of John's father, George McDougall, the superintendent of Methodist missionary work in Western Canada.

[1] The site John chose was originally called Ghost River,[2] but he renamed it Morleyville in honour of his friend Morley Punshon, an Ontario doctor.

[1][3] John McDougall and his wife began their work by constructing a two-room log shack with a sod roof for themselves and a small church.

[2] In its early days, some seven hundred First Nations people visited the post to barter animal skins for food, blankets, stockings, and prints.

[6] The homes and the trading post were enclosed by a stockade of heavy logs erected to provide defence in case a party of First Nations warriors attempted a raid.

[2] The outpost became a hub for settlers coming into the Bow Valley and reached a population of over two hundred at its peak; Morleyville was southern Alberta's first pioneer settlement.

Morleyville's early prominence declined in the 1880s after the Canadian Pacific transcontinental railroad bypassed the settlement as it was routed through the valley on the opposite side of the Bow River.

[1][5] The McDougall Stoney Mission Society maintains the church and the surrounding 50 acres (0.20 km2) of ecologically significant native prairie that has never been disturbed by agriculture.

[10][11] In 1969, Mînî Thnî hosted the first magistrate's court in Canada to be held in a First Nations-owned building located on First Nations land.