The town of Millet got its name from August Millet, a fur trader who had various contracts with the Hudson's Bay Company and the Northwest Mounted Police at Fort Saskatchewan. He provided quality breed horses for the mobile mounted unit of the North West Mounted Police. At the same time Millet was also working with the well-known Roman Catholic missionary, Father Albert Lacombe, and served as his canoe man on long river trips. He was known as Father Lacombe's great travelling companion.
The town of Millet received its name in 1891 when Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) president, Sir William Van Horne, asked his good friend, Father Lacombe, to name railway stations from Lacombe north on the new Calgary-Edmonton line. Father Lacombe produced a list and included his travelling companion's name, August Millet, as a possibility for the name of one of the more progressive communities in that region. Lieutenant Governor Dewdney of the Northwest Territories at Regina sent a list in that confirmed the choice of Millet as a town name by the CPR. A railway siding would come to mark the name, Millet. The town of Millet stands as a memorial to one of central Alberta's outstanding pioneers.
The site that was chosen by the CPR to mark the new railway siding was under water much of the time. Early settlers arriving by train during the first few years or so stepped down to walk on a raised boardwalk built across a watery slough to be able to reach the buildings which comprised the tiny village of Millet. An early settler, Barney Koenen who arrived in 1901 from Holland, said of Millet, "It was a signpost in a slough!"
The Canadian Pacific Railway had come through from Calgary to Edmonton in 1891. A fur buyer, Ben Slaughter, had a house and a warehouse on the east side of the tracks about a hundred yards south of where the CPR built a permanent railway station in 1907. The first railway station was an empty railway car at the north crossing of what is now Millet. The second station was a small building built in 1902 at the same location. The new station built in 1907 was situated about three blocks south of the first station site.
A Post Office was established in 1896 and Ben Slaughter was Millet's first Post Master until 1897. He operated the Post Office out of his store located across the tracks about 100 yards southeast of where the station was built later in 1907.
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