August 20, A day in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories

We spent the day going to the visitor's center, a Yellowknife museum, touring the town, and getting supplies.

Yellowknife was built on gold mining, and has been added to by the diamond mining interests.  Gold mining started in the 1930's and is still going on, mostly with two big gold mines.  Diamond deposits were found in the 1990's, with one big mine near Yellowknife and one located far to the northwest.  Both the gold mines and diamond mines use underground tunnels as well as open pit operations.

Since Yellowknife is located on the shore of the Great Slave Lake, and much of the travel in upper Canada is done by air, there are many "Float Planes" tied up at docks in the city.  The lake provides a small protected bay for them, as well as a take-off and landing area on the lake.  Apparently in winter, they switch from floats to skis.

Yellowknife is interesting that for a population of only 18,000, there are many high rise buildings.  It seems like some of them are occupied by the gold or diamond companies, but many also seem to be apartments or condos.  We speculated that there are so many high rises because the land is extremely costly to develop.  The whole area is made up of solid rock, and roads and utilities must be very expensive.

Most people we met said that they loved Yellowknife, but didn't love the weather.  They have pretty cold and snowy winters.

With the whole area covered by rocks, geologists have found what they say is some rock of age 2.8 billion years old, the oldest on the planet.

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