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Maple Ridge was incorporated on September 12, 1874; it was the sixth municipality to be formed in B.C., preceded only by New Westminster, Victoria, Langley, Chilliwack, and North Cowichan. At that time Maple Ridge consisted of 33,000 acres, but had fewer than 50 families.

By 1874, several small communities had sprung up on the north side of the Fraser River including Port Haney, Port Hammond, Pitt Meadows, Whonnock, Albion, Ruskin, and Webster's Corners. One of the problems of small isolated communities is that they tend to stay small and isolated unless some means is found to build roads between them.

One of the earliest European settlers in the district was John Mclver, a Scot, who homesteaded where the Maple Ridge Golf Course is now located. The first Council was formed on October 3, 1874 when a group of men representing their small communities gathered at Mclver's farm to discuss incorporating the whole district between the Pitt River and Mission to allow taxation for road building. The McIver property with its ridge of beautiful maple trees which stretched for two miles along the river was the source for the name Maple Ridge.

Maple Ridge was not connected to New Westminster until 1913 with the construction of River Road and the Pitt River Bridge and was the only rural municipality in British Columbia through which the Canadian Pacific Railway passed.

Today, the population exceeds 75,000 on the same 33,000 acres.