page_title: Yellowknife
section_title: Cityscape
hierarchical_section_title: Yellowknife / Geography / Cityscape
caption_attribution_description: en:Yellowknife-Downtown - Canada
context_page_description: Yellowknife is the capital, only city, and largest community in the Northwest Territories, Canada. It is on the northern shore of Great Slave Lake, about 400 km south of the Arctic Circle, on the west side of Yellowknife Bay near the outlet of the Yellowknife River.
  Yellowknife and its surrounding water bodies were named after a local Dene tribe at one time known as the "Copper Indians" or "Yellowknife Indians", today incorporated as the Yellowknives Dene First Nation, who traded tools made from copper deposits near the Arctic Coast. Its population, which is ethnically mixed, was 19,569 per the 2016 Canadian Census. Of the eleven official languages of the Northwest Territories, five are spoken in significant numbers in Yellowknife: Dene Suline, Dogrib, South and North Slavey, English, and French. In the Dogrib language, the city is known as Sǫ̀mbak'è. Modern Yellowknives members can be found in the adjoining, primarily Indigenous communities of Ndilǫ and Dettah.
  The Yellowknife settlement is considered to have been founded in 1934, after gold was found in the area, although commercial activity in the present-day waterfront area did not begin until 1936.
context_section_description: Yellowknife, like most other urban centres, has distinct commercial, industrial, and residential areas. Frame Lake, Niven Lake, Range Lake, and Old Town are the residential sectors, with some of the population living in high-rises in the downtown core. Niven Lake is the only area under active development and expansion. Downtown Yellowknife is home to most of the city's commercial activity, though some retail does exist in Range Lake. Industrial activity is limited to the Kam Lake and airport subdivisions.
caption: Downtown Yellowknife is home to most of the city's commercial activity
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