Facts About The Yukon Territory

Population: (2001 estimate), 28,674.

The northwesternmost corner of Canada is the Yukon, a territory famous for its gold rush of the 1890s. The Yukon shares more than 650 miles (1,040 kilometers) of border with its United States neighbor Alaska on the west and also borders the Beaufort Sea on the north, the Northwest Territories on the east, and British Columbia on the south. It covers a total area of 186,300 square miles (482,515 square kilometers). Whitehorse (population 14,814) is the capital and largest city.

Much of the Yukon is mountainous. It is part of the Canadian geological region known as the Cordillera, which is a segment of a larger mountain system that extends along the Pacific coast from North America to South America. The major range in the Yukon is the St. Elias in the extreme southwest. This range has Canada's highest and North America's second highest peak, Mount Logan, with an elevation of 19,524 feet (5,951 meters). Mountain ranges alternate with valleys and plateaus to make up the Yukon landscape. The Yukon River, which flows through Alaska to the Bering Sea, drains most of the territory.

The Yukon is in the subarctic climate zone and is thus very cold. Yearly average temperatures are usually below the freezing mark, but wide variations can occur. The lowest temperature ever recorded in North America, -80o F (-62o C), occurred in the Yukon, but summer temperatures have reached as high as 95o F (35o C). The mountains on the west cut off much rain and snow so that precipitation is light, usually between 9 and 17 inches (23 and 43 centimeters) a year. Because of the Yukon's extreme northern position, summers are characterized by long hours of sunlight--sometimes more than 20 hours a day. In like fashion winter daylight hours are very short.

It was the Klondike gold rush of 1896-98 that brought the Yukon to international attention. Gold was discovered in 1896 in Rabbit Creek, later renamed Bonanza Creek, a tributary of the Klondike River. Within a few years prospectors flooded the area. Since the Yukon was still largely inaccessible, many of the prospectors never reached the richest gold areas, but those who did transformed the Yukon into a brawling, adventurous frontier area almost overnight.

In 1898 the Yukon was separated from the Northwest Territories and given a measure of self-government. Dawson became the capital of the newly formed territory. In 1900 the White Pass and Yukon Railway--connecting Skagway, Alaska, with Whitehorse--was completed, but the gold rush had already begun to abate. Within a few years the population of the Yukon had dwindled to only a few thousand.