Yellowknife the Deh Cho Bridge, which officially opened on November 30, 2012, the city now has its first direct road connection to the rest of the country. As of the 2016 Census, there were 19,569 people and 7,130 households in the city. The population density was . The 2016 Census found that 22.7% of residents identified as Indigenous. In 2017 the Government of the Northwest Territories reported that the population was 20,834 with an average yearly growth rate of 0.6% from 2007. In Yellowknife, the population is slightly younger at 34.6 than the average age for the rest of the NWT
Yellowknife Yellowknife began with the discovery of diamonds north of the city in 1991. The last of the gold mines in Yellowknife closed in 2004. Today, Yellowknife is primarily a government town and a service centre for the diamond mines. On April 1, 1999, its purview as capital of the NWT was reduced when the territory of Nunavut was split from the NWT. As a result, jurisdiction for that region of Canada was transferred to the new capital city of Iqaluit. Consequently, Yellowknife lost its standing as the Canadian capital city with the smallest population. Yellowknife is on the Canadian Shield,