History of Whitehorse, Yukon

Dateline: November 6, 2024. Last update: February 23, 2026.

    The photographs below were all posted by the McCord Stewart Museum in Montreal in 2024. They state that the photographer is not known, but most of the originals are 10 x 11.7 cm in size, and all were created with the gelatin silver process, silver salts on paper mounted on paper. They are listed as Public Domain, able to be freely reproduced. Some of the captions are not correct, and some images don't even have the community identified, and we will be passing on our information to them.

    We are fairly certain we know who the photographer was. In May 1899, Percy Fremlin Scharschmidt started printing The Bennett Sun at Bennett, B.C. In early 1900, with the White Pass & Yukon Route railway being completed to White Horse and Bennett dying, he moved his equipment to the new community and started The Northern Star, which soon became The White Horse Star. No copies of the first 24 issues are known. These photos are very much what a newspaper photographer would shoot.

Click on each image to greatly enlarge it.

The southern end of Whitehorse. Some buildings can be seen across the river in the original community of Closeleigh. The head of navigation on the Yukon River was at the base of the escarpment to the right. The White Pass & Yukon Route railway had just reached Whitehorse on June 8, 1900.

The photo above (full image) and below (cropped section) shows the southern part of the business section of Whitehorse in the summer of 1900. The new 2-storey Hotel Savoy, built in March-April 1900, can be seen below, with the original Savoy now renamed the Hotel Pioneer.

Men and women ready to play hockey on a rink on the frozen Yukon River.

A hockey costume party on a rink at the Mounted Police headquarters.

A group of children and adults with a dog sled. The sign to the left of the door says "Free Reading" - Whitehorse was often on a circuit travelled by itinerant preachers of various kinds.

Children with a sled and two dogs.

Adults and children getting water from the Yukon River with barrels on five sleds pulled by dogs and a horse.

A group of men with three reindeer pulling sleds.

A man with a pet black bear.

Harmonium and pulpit.

Pews and pulpit decorated for Christmas.

Congregation in church.

The Canadian Bank of Commerce.

The interior of a church.

The White Pass & Yukon Route railway depot.

Riverboats berthed for the winter.

The Methodist Church.

Front Street, with White Horse Drugs, the Bennett News, The Windsor Hotel, and more.

A group of men on Front Street north of the railway depot.

Recreation period at the Presbyterian Church.

The Rev. Wright and his congregation in the Presbyterian Church.

Yukon Presbyterian Church services held in the railway dining tent.

A picnic along the Yukon River at the south end of Whitehorse. The mountain the background is Golden Horn.

Freight sheds along the Yukon River, with the railway depot toward the centre left.

The Anglican church was built by Rev. Richard Bowen in the summer of 1900.

Library corner in a home, possibly at Whitehorse.