Old Town is the original heart of Yellowknife, built on rocky outcrops and islets along the shore of Yellowknife Bay in the 1930s. The neighbourhood has a character unlike any other in Canada — a ramshackle, warmly human mix of wooden houses, log cabins, colourful houseboats frozen in the ice each winter, and floatplane docks where Cessnas and Beavers take off for remote lakes. It was here that gold rush prospectors first set up camp, and the informal, make-do spirit of those years has never entirely left.
Wandering the lanes of Old Town on a summer evening, with the long northern light bouncing off the bay, is one of the most distinctive experiences in the Canadian North. The Bush Pilots Monument stands on a rock above the bay, offering panoramic views across the water and the New Town skyline. The Wildcat Cafe, operating since 1937 in a restored log cabin, is the social heart of the neighbourhood and a fine place to eat.