Alaska blanketed the southern Yukon with a layer of ash which can still be seen along the Klondike Highway, and which forms part of the oral tradition of First Nations peoples in the Yukon and further south in Canada. Coastal and inland First Nations had extensive trading networks. European incursions into the area began early in the 19th century with the fur trade, followed by missionaries. By the 1870s and 1880s, gold miners began to arrive. This drove a population increase that justified the establishment of a police force, just in time for the start of the Klondike Gold Rush in 1897. The increased population coming with the gold rush led to the separation of the Yukon district from the Northwest Territories and the formation of the separate Yukon Territory in 1898. Demographics The 2016 census reported a Yukon population of 35,874, an increase of 5.8% from 2011. With a land area of , it had a population density of in 2011, the highest among all the Canadian territories. Statistics Canada has estimated Yukon's 2022 Q4 population to be 43,964, an increase of 17.5% from the 2016 census. This is the largest percentage increase for any Canadian province or territory. Unlike in other Canadian provinces and territories, Statistics Canada uses the entire territory as a single at-large census division. Ethnicity According to the 2016 Canada Census the majority of the territory's population was of European descent, although it has a significant population of First Nations communities across the territory. The 2011 National Household Survey examined the Yukon's ethnocultural diversity and immigration. At that time, 87.7% of residents were Canadian-born and 24.2% were of Indigenous origin. The most common countries of birth for immigrants were the United Kingdom (15.9%), the Philippines (15.0%), and the United States (13.2%). Among very recent immigrants (between 2006 and 2011) living in the Yukon, 63.5% were born in Asia. As of the 2016 census, the top ten ancestries in the Yukon were: Language The most commonly reported mother tongue among the 33,145 single responses to the 2011 Canadian census was English at 28,065 (). The second-most common was 1,455 () for French. Among 510 multiple respondents, 140 of them () reported a mother tongue of both English and French, while 335 () reported English and a " language" and 20 () reported French and a " language". The Yukon's Language Act "recognises the significance" of the