Geography of Yukon - Human Geography

Human Geography

The Yukon is sparsely populated, with about 30,000 inhabitants in a territory almost as large as Spain or Sweden. Population density is 0.06 people per km². Close to three quarters of the population is in the Whitehorse area, and the rest live in a number of other communities. All except Old Crow are accessible by road.

The capital, Whitehorse, is also the largest city with more than two thirds of the population; the second largest is Dawson City, (pop. 1800) which was the capital until 1952.

Traditionally, the Yukon was inhabited by nomadic Athapaskan-speaking First Nations people who had established extensive trading networks with the Pacific Coast Tlingit. The interior people traded copper, furs and meat for coastal products such as eulachon oil. About 20% of the Yukon population is of aboriginal origin.

There is no Inuit population in the Yukon, although there was a population along the Arctic Ocean coast within historic times. The Inuit were decimated by disease and disappeared in the 19th century. In 1984, the Government of Canada included the Yukon North Slope within the Inuvialuit Settlement Region under the auspices of the Inuvialuit.

The following table presents the population of most Yukon communities. Note that the Census data represents those people who lived within the community boundaries, while the Yukon Bureau of Statistics (YBS) includes everyone with a postal address in the community. Typically, many people live immediately outside the community boundaries, hence the larger YBS numbers.