History

The Yukon was the first area in Canada to be settled by people. Anthropologists believe the ancestors of the Amerindians may have inhabited the Yukon 10,000 to 25,000 years ago when they migrated from Asia across a Bering Sea land bridge. The first modern European visitors were Russian explorers who traveled along the coast in the 18th century and traded with the Aboriginal People.  With the onset of discovering new lands and the Klondike Gold Rush, The Hudson's Bay Company moved into the interior in the 1840s, and the landscape became more populated.

Whitehorse got its name from the treacherous rapids the stampeders had to brave while navigating the Yukon River on their way to Dawson, named White Horse for their white caps. At first Canyon City, just north of present-day Whitehorse, was the stopping point after the Chilkoot Pass. Two tramways were built, one on each side of the river, bypassing the rapids and taking travelers and goods from Canyon City to Whitehorse. By 1900 the White Pass and Yukon Route, a narrow-gauge railway connecting Skagway with Whitehorse, was completed. Now Whitehorse became a communications terminal and grew in size and importance.

Today, the rapids have been calmed by the building of the Whitehorse Dam in 1958, creating Schwatka Lake. But the White Pass and Yukon Route Railway - the only international narrow gauge railway still operating in North America - is still there and round  trips depart from Skagway in the summer.

The next big boom for Whitehorse came in 1942 with the building of the Alaska Highway. Tens of thousands of army and civilian workers flooded into the city. To this day, Whitehorse is still a major hub of road and air transportation. The city was incorporated in 1950, and in 1953 Whitehorse became the capital of the Yukon instead of Dawson.