Grantown-on-Spey is a town in the Highland Council Area in Scotland. It was founded in 1765 as a planned settlement on a low plateau at Freuchie beside the river Spey at the northern edge of the Cairngorm mountains, about 20 miles South East of Inverness (35 miles by road). It is the main town in what was the ecclesiastical (and later civil) parish of "Cromdale, Inverallan and Advie" formed by the union of the same-named parishes in the 16th century. It was formerly in the county of Moray, until the 1860s being partly within a detached portion of Inverness-shire. From 1898 to 1975 it was a burgh in Morayshire before being subsumed into the Badenoch and Strathspey district of the Highland Region until District and Regions were abolished in 1996. Originally simply "Grantown" (after Sir James Grant), the addition of "on Spey" was one of the first actions of the newly-created burgh in 1898. The 2001 population was 2,239. Grantown-on-Spey is twinned with Notre-Dame-de-Monts in Vendée, Pays-de-la-Loire, France.