Page created on : January 28, 2003
Last updated : January 28, 2003

The Yukon River, 10th longest in the world at 1368 kilometres, starts in Tagish Lake along the British Columbia-Yukon border, just a few kilometres from the Pacific Ocean, then flows north-west into Alaska, enters the Arctic Circle near Fort Yukon, finally turning south-west and emptying into the Bering Sea at Norton Sound.

The river has been a route to promised riches - as it was during the famed Klondike Gold Rush - and a channel of migration. It is believed that at least 15,000 years ago, Indians trecked across the land bridge from Asia and moved southward along the Yukon River, as did the Arctic-Mongoloid ancestors of today's Inuit and Aleuts.

Ironically, this oldest route of immigration was the last major river of North America to be discovered by Europeans - Russians from Alaska first saw it in 1834.

Canada Post Corporation's Yukon River stamp depict hoodoos in bluffs near Hootalinga and in a vignette, shows the sternwheeler, Klondike.