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Whitehorse, city and capital (since 1952) of Yukon, Canada, located on the Yukon (Lewes) River just below Miles Canyon and the former Whitehorse Rapids (now submerged beneath Schwatka Lake, created after 1958 by a hydropower dam). It is the Yukon headquarters of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Whitehorse sits on the Yukon River, located at the base of three nearby mountains; Grey Mountain to the east, Mount Sumanik to the northwest, and Golden Horn Mountain to the south. Whitehorse is located at kilometre 1,425 (Historic Mile 918) of the Alaska Highway and is framed by three nearby mountains: Grey Mountain to the east, Mount Sumanik ...
- Start at Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre. Let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start… Where better to start your time in Whitehorse than at the very beginning – of history?!
- Explore Kwanlin Dün Cultural Centre. After getting a sense of how the Yukon came to be – how humans and animals came to this region tens of thousands of years ago – another good stop is at the Kwanlin Dün Cultural Centre where you can start to learn about some of the First Nations people who call the Yukon home today.
- Visit the MacBride Museum. I’ll be honest: I haven’t been to the MacBride Museum of Yukon History in part because I always visit the Yukon Beringia center during my trips to Whitehorse.
- Dig Into MacBride Copperbelt Mining Museum. Companion to the MacBride history museum, the MacBride Copperbelt Mining Museum sinks deep into the main chapter of Yukon history post-contact with European-descended settlers: the gold rush, and all the mining history that has followed.
- Overview
- How To Do This Trip
On the Yukon River and under the northern lights, this town is packed with wild spaces and historic charm.
Urgent knuckles rap against my bedroom door. I open my eyes. The clock says 2:17 a.m. At the door stands the man I met at dinner. He’s in shorts, winded, fog seeping from his breath in the chill.
“They’re dancing,” Mike from Ontario explains.
It’s totally fine to wake fellow guests in the wee hours in the Yukon. At least when the northern lights are out.
I grab a jacket, slip on my shoes, and hop out into a brisk late summer night. Then I look up. Though it’s only the start of aurora borealis season (which lasts from late August to April), white lights are stretching across the sky. At first they’re slight and murky, then saturate into impressive bold stripes made from solar winds crashing into our atmosphere. I am, well, star struck. They make me think of unseen giants playfully running their chubby fingertips across our sky, as if it were a cosmic cake’s frosting.
“The only bad thing about living here is you don’t get any sleep,” says Wolfgang Bublitz, the German owner of Whitehorse’s Northern Lights Resort. He’s up admiring the view too. “It’s too beautiful.”
When to Go
Summer and winter are popular times to visit the area around Whitehorse. In late summer, I hiked, canoed, and biked. Winter is a popular time to come for snowshoeing, cross-country skiing, dog-sledding, and seeing the northern lights.
Where to Stay
In the summer, demand in Whitehorse is way beyond availability; book your accommodation well ahead of your trip.
Most visitors prefer staying just outside Whitehorse. A 25-minute drive south of Whitehorse, the German-run Northern Lights Resort has four cabins facing big skies and mountains, plus a hot tub to use. Another enviable spot nearby is Boréale.
In town, I enjoyed Coast High Country Inn, a standard hotel with a good bar/restaurant and a towering wood-carved Mountie outside.
The city is along the banks of the Yukon River. It is in a rain shadow area, so Whitehorse is Canada's driest city. Whitehorse's downtown and Riverdale areas occupy both shores of the Yukon River, which originates in British Columbia and meets the Bering Sea in Alaska.
Check where is Whitehorse Located in Canada Map? Whitehorse is the capital of Yukon, and the largest city in Northern Canada. Find Whitehorse City facts, population, area, postcode, area codes, nearest airport, highways, time zone and more details at Whereig.com.
The City of Whitehorse, the capital of Yukon, is located about 87 km north of the British Columbia border. Geography and Climate. Communities like Whitehorse, which fall along the Alaska Highway, are often identified by where they sit on this stretch of road. With Dawson Creek , British Columbia at 0 km, Whitehorse is at kilometre 1,476.
