24 Facts About Yellowknife

Yellowknife is the capital, largest community, and only city in the Northwest Territories, Canada.

Yellowknife settlement is considered to have been founded in 1934, after gold was found in the area, although commercial activity in the present-day waterfront area did not begin until 1936.

Yellowknife quickly became the centre of economic activity in the NWT, and was named the capital of the Northwest Territories in 1967.

The current municipal area of Yellowknife was occupied by prospectors who ventured into the region in the mid-1930s.

Yellowknife boomed in the summer of 1938 and many new businesses were established, including the Canadian Bank of Commerce, Hudson's Bay Company, Vic Ingraham's first hotel, Sutherland's Drug Store, and a pool hall.

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Between 1939 and 1953, Yellowknife was controlled by the Northern Affairs department of the Government of Canada.

In September 1967, Yellowknife officially became the capital of the Northwest Territories.

Today, Yellowknife is primarily a government town and a service centre for the diamond mines.

Consequently, Yellowknife lost its standing as the Canadian capital city with the smallest population.

Yellowknife is on the Canadian Shield, which was scoured down to rock during the last ice age.

In 2014, Environment Canada ranked Yellowknife as having the coldest winter and longest snow cover season of any city in Canada, while experiencing the sunniest spring and summer of any city in Canada.

Downtown Yellowknife is home to most of the city's commercial activity, though some retail does exist in Range Lake.

Yellowknife is represented in the territorial government by seven of the 19 members of the Legislative Assembly of the Northwest Territories.

Major employers in Yellowknife include the Territorial Government, the Federal Government, Diavik Diamond Mines, Dominion Diamonds, DeBeers Canada, First Air, NorthwesTel, RTL Robinson Trucking, and the City of Yellowknife.

Property taxes in Yellowknife are calculated through property assessment and the municipal and education mill rates.

Yellowknife was originally established as a supply centre for numerous gold mines operating in the region in the late 1930s and early 1940s.

Yellowknife operates almost entirely on hydroelectricity from the Snare-Bluefish systems, provided by the Northwest Territories Power Corporation .

City of Yellowknife provides pressurized potable water throughout the majority of the city, and has a network of gravity-fed sewage lines; trucked water and sewage is provided in areas not serviced by piped infrastructure.

The Yellowknife airport is designated by the Royal Canadian Air Force as a forward operating location for the CF-18 Hornet.

Yellowknife Transit is the public transportation agency in the city, and is the only transit system in the Northwest Territories.

One well-known, almost infamous, road in Yellowknife is Ragged Ass Road, after which Tom Cochrane named an album.

Until 2012, Yellowknife did not have a permanent road connection to the rest of Canada's highway network, as the Yellowknife Highway relied, depending on the season, on ferry service or an ice road to cross the Mackenzie River.

Yellowknife is home to 695 recent immigrants who now make up 3.

Yellowknife is usually where scientists start geological mapping expeditions when researching the oldest known rocks in North America.