Yellowknife sits on the north shore of Great Slave Lake, the last city before the tundra takes over. The Dene have lived around Great Slave Lake for thousands of years, and the modern town traces its start to a 1930s gold rush that drew prospectors onto Yellowknife Bay. Gold built the city, but its deeper role in Arctic history is as a jumping-off point: this has been where overland and air expeditions provisioned before pushing north into the Barren Lands and the Arctic Archipelago. Franklin's overland parties staged here before descending the Coppermine.
Today Yellowknife is the capital of the Northwest Territories.
