Whitehorse: City of Whitecaps
Whitehorse is the capital of the Yukon. It has a population of 23,000. Its name comes from a common term for a whitecap: Whitehorse.
Whitehorse is located on a river shelf of land bordering the Yukon River. Whitehorse is 1471 kilometers or 914 miles northwest of Dawson Creek, British Columbia; 980 kilometers or 609 miles from Fairbanks; and 1165 kilometers or 724 miles from Anchorage Alaska. Over two-thirds of the Yukon’s residents live in Whitehorse.
Whitehorse Tourist Attractions
Take Tours and Travel with Local Companies:
Alpine Aviation Ltd.
Explore the Yukon's most popular destinations in a chartered airplane based out of Whitehorse. Alpine Aviation Charters offer custom tours including hiking, skiing, surveying, and flying lessons.
Contact: 1-867-668-7725
Arctic Excursions Ltd.
Charter destinations include areas north of Great Slave Lake. Adventures include fishing tours, canoeing tours, kayaking, camping, and Yellowknife aerial tours.
Contact: 1-867-669-7216
Wolverine Air
Take a charter to Little Doctor Lake and Virginia Falls and choose from a Cessna 206 or a Cessna 185 from which to enjoy your tour. Tours last from 5 to 7 hours
Contact: 1-867-695-2263
Wannecke Air Services Ltd
This company offers wildlife and sightseeing tours, camping, hunting and fishing trips, northern lights observations tours, charters between communities, exploration expeditions. Charter a reasonably priced Cessna 206.
Contact:
Phone 1-867-669-9253
Tutchone Air Inc.
Charter an arplane from a company that offers explicit sightseeing tours all over the Yukon River, the Klondike, Fort Selkirk, Kluane Icefields, and Mount Logan - the highest mountain in all of Canada!
Contact:
Phone: 1-867-667-2488
Amenities in Whitehorse:
A library, theatres, two newspapers, and one television station serve the city today. Live color television is received via satellite in Whitehorse as well as in most Yukon communities. There are four radio stations
Whitehorse Facts and History
Archeological records show that indigenous people lived in this are as far back as 500 BC. Explorers in the 1880’s noted there were trials and settlements belong to indigenous people but they had very little social contact with one another. The area surrounding what is called Whitehorse today was a portion of the seasonal trails of the Southern Tutchone and Tagish Indigenous peoples of the Yukon. The Tlingit peoples from the coast were frequent partners and came to the Whitehorse area to trade. Early explorers were George Mercer Dawson n 1887 and Frederick Schwatka in 1883.
Gold was found in the Yukon region in 1890. Skookum Jim, George Washington Carmack and Tagish Charlie were the lucky prospectors. The gold rush continued, and people seeking their fortune arrived in droves and a small but complete town was built by 1900: a hardware store, six large hotels, two drug stores, a brick yard, 2000 feet of warehouses on the waterfront, three churches, an athletic club and an electrical plant. Tents, log houses and clapboard buildings were built to house even the poorest of prospectors.
The advent of the aircraft brought more trade and industry to the town in the far north. During World War II Whitehorse was a railway base for freight. The attack on Pearl Harbour had made Americans suspicious of flying and it felt safer to have goods travel by ground. The Alaska Highway was also built to serve this end. The railway and the highway helped the city grow and more and more people came to live and work there. It was made the capital of the Yukon in 1951.
Safety Note: RCMP, in cooperation with the Yukon Territorial Government, has started a voluntary registration system for people venturing into wilderness areas.
Registration forms are available at the RCMP 4100 4th Avenue, Whitehorse, YT. 867-667-5555.
http://www.city.whitehorse.yk.ca/