Lake Laberge
lake in Yukon, Canada
Lake Laberge is a widening of the Yukon River north of Whitehorse, Yukon in Canada. It is fifty kilometres (31 mi) long and ranges from two to five kilometres (1 to 3 mi) wide, with an average depth of 54 metres (177 ft), a maximum depth of 146 metres (479 ft) and a surface area of 201 km2 (78 sq mi). Its water is always very cold, and its weather often harsh and suddenly variable.
Names
The local Southern Tutchone called it Tàa'an Män, Tagish knew it as Kluk-tas-si, and the Tlingit as Tahini-wud.
Its English name comes from 1870 commemorating Michel LaBerge (1836–1909) - born in Chateauguay, Quebec, the first French-Canadian to explore the Yukon in 1866. It was well known to prospectors during the Klondike Gold Rush of the 1890s, as they would pass Lake Laberge on their way down the Yukon River to Dawson City: Jack London's Grit of Women (1900) and The Call of the Wild (1903), and Robert W. Service's poem "The Cremation of Sam McGee" (1907) mention the lake (although Service altered the spelling from Laberge to "Lebarge" to rhyme with "marge"; but London used "Lebarge" too).
History and archaeology
During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, after-winter steamers carrying goods on Lake Laberge early on in the shipping season regarded the lake as trouble, since it was one of the last such passages to thaw its ice. At least two methods were employed to break the ice up:
Method 1
Release a surge of water from the upstream control dam, below Marsh Lake, to suddenly raise the lake water beneath the ice, cracking the ice as its surface rises.
Method 2
Smear an abundant quantity of expended crankcase oil along the lake's icy length, causing it to melt by increasing the sun's warming effect.
In spring 2009, researchers found the A. J. Goddard, a Gold Rush sternwheeler that sunk in 1901, killing three of its crew.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Lake Laberge” is lake in Yukon, Canada. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Lake, Laberge and lake, not as a finished interpretation.
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Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q937444. Authority coordinates are 61.169, -135.169. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1870, 1836, 1909 and 1866.
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This entry incorporates text from “Lake Laberge” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.