Sign In

My Timeline

GuRoute

Discover Your World

Share your Experiences

Record your Life

beta

Discover Your World

  1
   

Top Attractions in Yellowknife

Ragged Ass Road

Ragged Ass Road is a short unpaved residential street in the Old Town section of Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada. Its name started as a joke in 1970 by resident Lou Rocher, who owned much of the property along it at the time, and his friends. At the time the street had been known as "Privy Road" due to the large number of outhouses along it. But a difficult prospecting season had yielded them little income, convincing them they were "ragged ass broke" and that that should be the name of the street. While widely used, it was somewhat controversial. The name was not officially recognized by the city with signposts until the mid-2010s, after Rocher's death. It has been described as "one of the most famous streets" in Canada. Singer Tom Cochrane named his 1995 album after it, including a song about the street.

Fireweed Studio

The Fireweed Studio is a log cabin in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada, located in Somba K'e Park near City Hall. It was built in the late 1930s to house explosives at what later became Giant Mine, and later moved to its present location. In 1996 it was listed on the Canadian Register of Historic Places; two years later it was designated a city Heritage Building for its status as a well-preserved remnant of the city's early years. Following its construction, it was used for a year to store explosives. After more modern facilities were built for that purpose, reagents were stored there during the 1940s, as well as other mining supplies. It was sold to the Yellowknife Chamber of Commerce in 1973, and was renovated for use as a tourist center. More recently, after some further renovations, it has served as a gift shop operated by the Yellowknife Guild of Arts and Crafts during summer months.

Con Mine

The Con Mine was the first gold mine developed in the Northwest Territories, just south of Yellowknife. The property was staked by Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company of Canada in September 1935 in response to the discovery of visible gold nearby; the name "Con" is an abbreviation of "Consolidated". The advent of winter prevented any prospecting from being conducted, but work in the summer of 1936 led to the discovery of numerous gold veins. The Con Mine entered production in 1938 and ceased operations in 2003. It has produced over 5,000,000 ozt of gold from 12,195,585 tons of ore processed. The mine was over 6,000 ft deep. Owners of the mine have included Cominco , Nerco Minerals , Miramar Mining Corp. , and Newmont Mining Corp. . Geologically, the Con Mine is located within the Kam Group which is part of the Yellowknife greenstone belt.

Fort Reliance

Fort Reliance is the site of a Hudsons Bay Company fort located on the east arm of Great Slave Lake, Northwest Territories, Canada. It was originally built in 1833 by George Back during the Arctic Land Expedition to the Arctic Ocean via the Back River. The expedition, partly scientific and partly searching for the missing John Ross, used Fort Reliance as a winter camp. Backs fort was made up of a main house with several smaller ones that were constructed from logs. The houses had stone and clay chimneys for heating. The outline of the logs along with the chimneys and some storage pits still exist. In 1855, the Hudsons Bay Companys Chief Factor James Anderson, for whom the Anderson River is named, rebuilt the fort. It was intended to be used as winter quarters while searching for the lost expedition of John Franklin, but it was again abandoned after one season. It was not a fur trading outpost although the site was later used by trappers in the Thelon River area. In 1897, a log cabin, using one of the chimneys, was built by an American trapper, Buffalo Jones. Fort Reliance was designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 1953. It is described by Parks Canada as the "oldest continuously operating Hudsons Bay Company post, 1833". Together with the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre, Parks Canada is working to preserve and protect the site, which has resulted in the chimneys being rehabilitated.

Bank of Toronto

The Bank of Toronto is a historic cabin located in Old Town, Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada. The log cabin was constructed in 1939 by John Stakson an expert log builder in the commercial district of the Yellowknife community for use as a residence. In October 1944, the Bank of Toronto purchased the cabin and opened a new bank for the community, joining the Bank of Commerce (Yellowknife's first bank in 1938). The bank arrived in Yellowknife in response to new financial activity brought about by the intersection of gold in shear zones at Giant Mine and the resulting staking spree around the region. As the gold rush ended, the volume of business was insufficient to keep the bank profitable, and the Bank of Toronto closed this branch in August 1951. Purchased by prospector Sam Otto in 1964, the old log cabin was renovated and moved to its current location on Latham Island for use as a rental residence. The Bank of Toronto was designated a City of Yellowknife Heritage Site in 1998.

The Wildcat Cafe

The Wildcat Cafe is a vintage log cabin structure in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada and represents the mining camp style of early Yellowknife. The structure, which houses a summer restaurant, is located in what was then the central business district of the city. It is a City of Yellowknife Heritage Building, designated in 1992. First opened in 1937 by owners Willie Wylie and Smokey Stout, it is the oldest restaurant in Yellowknife. Subsequent owners were Carl and Dorothy Jensen and Mah Gow , Yellowknife's first recorded Chinese resident. The cafe closed in 1951 with the illness of Mr. Gow. The building was saved from demolition in the late 1950s when a small group of Yellowknifers fought to have it protected as a heritage site. By 1970 no work had been done to restore the abandoned cabin and it was in poor shape when a new generation of concerned citizens lobbied for its protection. It was soon renovated and reopened as a functional restaurant in 1979. The Old Stope Association, a non-profit heritage society, was responsible for its operation in the 1970s-1980s, and today it is managed by the Wildcat Cafe Advisory Committee. In 1992, the cabin was declared a heritage site as an important old building in Yellowknife and the city took ownership. It is one of Yellowknife's most popular tourist attractions. In 2011, the city of Yellowknife decided to completely renovate the log building, which had settled far into the ground and was leaning dangerously in several directions at once. The dis-assembly process, including cataloguing and numbering the pieces, started on May 11, 2011. Reconstruction and repair continued during the summer of 2012 and the opening was delayed due to a number of unforeseen problems; however, the Wildcat Cafe reopened on June 22, 2013. The Canadian Museum of Civilization in Gatineau, Quebec, exhibited a replica of the cabin. This replica is being removed as part of a larger renovation to the museum's Canada Hall.

Greenstone Building

The Greenstone Building, officially the Greenstone Government of Canada Building, and sometimes known as the Greenstone Government Building, is located on Franklin Avenue in downtown Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada. It is a four-storey building faced in stone, completed and opened in 2005. Within are the local offices of 16 federal government agencies. Prior to the building's construction they were scattered in different buildings around the city. The name comes from greenstone, a rock found in great quantity in the area, from which the gold that led to Yellowknife's development was extracted. The building reflects that past in two other ways. Its interior stair tower is sided in slanted boards that recall the mineshaft towers still standing, and the location of a prominent local fault beneath the building is marked on the lobby floor. It was designed by the Edmonton firm of Manasc Isaac to be environmentally sustainable. Its central atrium has a curtain wall with photovoltaic cells, the largest such structure in Canada, and the second largest worldwide, at the time of the building's completion. Five percent of the building's electricity comes from that wall; it is used to heat water, some of which comes from the building's green roof and local groundwater, resulting in the building using half as much water as a comparably sized building. Heating efficiency is such that the building remains adequately warm during subzero winter days when many adjacent offices have to close. The building's green design reportedly saves CDN$80,000 in energy costs and reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 370 tonnes each year. Two years after its completion, on time and under budget, the Greenstone Building was recognized with LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Gold certification by the Canada Green Building Council. It was the first building in Northern Canada to achieve that designation, and the first LEED Gold for the architects. In 2007 the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada further honored it with an Innovation in Architecture Award of Excellence.

Yellowknife Post Office

The Post Office building for Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada, serving the X1A postal codes, is located at the southwest corner of 49th Street and Franklin Avenue. It is a two-storey concrete building in a late modernist style dating to the mid-20th century. In 2006 it was designated a City of Yellowknife Heritage Site in recognition of its long standing role as a social centrepiece for the downtown community; it has been administratively listed on the Canadian Register of Historic Places as a result. "This is where you went to find everybody" in the 1960s, one city councillor recalled when the building received its heritage plaque in 2010. It was the first federal government building constructed in what is now referred to as Yellowknife's New Town. The city had begun during the 1930s as a gold mining community on a peninsula and islands in the bay named for it on Great Slave Lake. When the boom resumed after World War II, it quickly outgrew the space available there, and New Town began to develop to the south on higher ground. The post office was completed in 1956 as the centralized, downtown location for mail services for Canada Post; it also housed the territorial courts until 1978. Both functions made it an important civic presence that helped establish New Town. During later decades, the building lost some of its prominence, as federal agencies that had been housed there moved elsewhere in downtown Yellowknife for more space and the city grew too large for all of its residents to receive their mail there through general delivery. It underwent some physical changes as well. A 1958 renovation added a rear pavilion, and a fire ten years later resulted in the reconstruction of the upper floor. In the 1990s it was extensively renovated and underwent significant changes to its exterior although the building's basic form remains. In 2010 it was deemed surplus. Since 2010 it has been privately owned and leased back to Canada Post. In 2014 the city's removal of the benches in response to complaints about the behaviour of local homeless people led to a sit-in protest by local residents.

Explorer Hotel

The Explorer Hotel is located on 49th Avenue in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada. It is an eight-story tall modernist concrete structure built in the mid-1970s. Located on a high outcrop of ground overlooking downtown, it is one of the tallest buildings in the city, and claims to be the largest hotel in Northern Canada; it has also been described as the city's best and grandest. It is owned and operated by Nunastar Properties. Members of three generations of the British Royal Family—Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Phillip, Prince Charles, and Prince William and his wife Duchess Catherine—have stayed at the Explorer on their visits to Yellowknife; it is also a popular destination for tourists who come to the city to see the northern lights. Before the territory's Legislative Assembly had its own building, it often met in the hotel's conference rooms. It underwent renovations in the 1990s, a small expansion in 2008, and in late 2015 the city granted permits for a larger expansion, even as a competing hotel project has been planned for a neighbouring property.
♥

This attraction is located in

This is a private property. Please enjoy respectfully and do not disturb the occupants.

Edit Categories
Add Tours

This attraction is not part of any tours

Add Collections

This attraction is not part of any collections

 

Some of the attractions we imported from Wikipedia are not perfect. Send us an email detailing what's wrong and we'll look into fixing it.

GuRoute is all about Gurus sharing their local knowledge. If you feel up to fixing this problem yourself, why not adopt it. You will become the owner and can fix whatever problems you see.

We've copied a link to this attraction into your clipboard so that ou can paste it into an email or text message...

More Info... ✔
You can add your friends to the visit yourself, or, send them a link and let them add themselves...

The visit will appear on both your timelines and on your Shared Timeline.

Click below and we'll email you a link that you can send on to friends or post on your group's Facebook page.

If your friends aren't members of GuRoute yet, this is a great way to get them started.
Recent
Recently used Collections will appear here...
Recent
Recently used tours will appear here...

Where is this?

GuRoute likes to place attractions inside other attractions. So, maybe it's in a city, or maybe it's inside a particular park in that city. Maybe your attraction is a huge park that spans half the county, or multiple counties.

Determining where this attraction is gives it context - if it's in a park, you'll be able to see it alongside all the other attractions in that park. And that helps define the park.

GuRoute will automatically calculate a parent region for this attraction. You can change it if there is something more appropriate.

This attraction is currently located in .

Change

This attraction does not yet have any reviews

Please login to write a review...

Reviewed by
Record new Visit

Add this location to your timneline?

  • If there's an existing attraction open it and add it to your timeline...
  • If not, enter a title and we'll create a new attraction for your memories...
Create new Attraction

Create a new attraction at this location?

  • We rely on Gurus like you to share your local knowledge...
(Give a name for this location)

+
Add this to your timeline instead...

Imagine having a record of all the cool things you've done in your life!


Using our timeline you can keep track of everywhere you visit in your lifetime...

But, you'll need to sign in first...

Add contacts so that you can share your travels and record places that you visit together...

Family
Favorites
Family
Favorites

Profile TimeLine Our Visits Edit Accept Decline Invite

If you have any more friends that visited this place with you, feel free to add them to the visit. We'll write it to their timeline and once they confirm it, they too will have this memory for a lifetime.

If they're not already registered, you just need their name and email address and you can add them and we'll send them an invite on your behlaf.

Add a tour comment

Add some extra information for when this attraction is viewed as part of your tour...

Next Stop Instructions

Add some instructions for what to see/do on the way to the next stop...

Next Stop Instructions

Add some instructions for what to see/do on the way to the next stop...

If you're visiting an existing attraction, open it and add it to your timeline. If there is no attraction for the place you are visiting...

  • Click 'Add My Location' below
  • Or right-click on the map to mark a different location
  • Or long-press if you have a touch screen
You can even add locations while you're offline....
  • Load up the map when you're online and we'll keep track of your locaiton
  • You can add locations to your timeline
  • When you are online again we'll sync them with the cloud

We can't connect to the internet right now. The following attractions are saved locally and can be uploaded when you're online...

GuRoute would like to access your current location so that we can pin you on the map and show you nearby attractions

Add friends so that you can share your experiences with each other...

Add tour to What's Next?

Go...

Either for yourself or someone else...

  1. Do your trip research in GuRoute
    Add all the places that you think might be worthy of a visit into a trip-plan
  2. Add your trip-plan to your "What's Next" timeline
    (or a friend's "What's Next" timeline)
  3. When you're on vacation you'll have all your research at your fingertips
  4. Share your timline with your friends
    They can enjoy your vacation with you, seeing not only where you've been, but where you're going next...
  5. Add/remove attractions if things change

It also makes a great souvenir of your trip

Collections

Go...

Create a home page for a collection of attractions

  • Add an image and description to display on the homepage
  • Start adding content
    Add existing attractions to your collection or create new attractions of your own
  • Collections can be:
    • Public (Anyone can add attractions to your collection)
    • Shared (Only yourself and Gurus you nominate can add content)
    • Private (The collection will only be visible to yourself)

Uses

  • Local business or hotel
    Showcase local attractions that you endorse
  • Clubs
    Showcase attractions that members have created (eg. local historical society)
  • Special Interest
    If GuRoute does not have a category for your special interest you add your attractions to your own collection instead

Examples

Walking/Driving Tours

Go...

A guided tour where GuRoute will direct you from stop to stop and narrate a description of each attraction you arrive at

  • GuRoute uses your phone's GPS to guide you from stop to stop
  • GuRoute automatically detects when you arrive at the next tour-stop and narrates the description of the attraction (Chrome Only)
  • It then sends you on to the next stop

Tours are great to attract people to your town. Even places with no significant points of interest can be lots of fun when part of a tour


Cater tours to your Audience

  • Kid-friendly Tours
    • Focus on what will keep kids interested
    • Instead of parents having to drag their kids around they'll be struggling to keep up
    • Let the kids navigate and they'll get more fun out of finding that historical plaque than they ever would from reading it
  • Accessible tours
  • Short and long tours of the same location

What you need to do...

  1. Click 'Go...'
    Enter a title, description and location for the tour
  2. Add existing attractions OR create new ones and add them to the tour
  3. For existing attractions you can add more information specific to the theme of the tour
  4. You can also add instructions on what to do or see en-route to the next tour-stop
  5. Try out your tour and see how it works...

Mystery Tour

Go...

Create a Mystery Tour

Create a series of clues to show people around a city, neighborhood or whatever place you like...

  • GuRoute will show people clues to get them from attraction to attraction
  • When they reach each stop GuRoute will tell them about the place and give them the next clue
  • Take as long or as you like and explore each location at your leisure

Scavenger Hunt

Go...

Create a Scavenger Hunt

Create a series of questions that people have to answer. The answers can all be discovered by walking aroung the area, looking for clues.

  • How many beers are on tap at Michael Collin's Irish Bar?
  • What's the name of the oldest building on main streeet?
  • Show a picture of some public art and ask them what it is called
  • Clues can have numeric or multiple choice answers