Yorkton
City
City of Yorkton
Downtown on Broadway Street
Flag Seal
Motto:  "Where Good Things Happen"
Yorkton Show map of Saskatchewan Yorkton Show map of Canada
Coordinates: 51°12′50″N 102°27′46″W / 51.21389°N 102.46278°W / 51.21389; -102.46278
Country	Canada
Province	Saskatchewan
Rural municipalities	Orkney Wallace
Incorporated village	July 15, 1894
Incorporated town	1900
Incorporated city	February 1, 1928
Government [1]
• Type	Mayor and Council
• Mayor	Mitch Hippsley
• MLA	Greg Ottenbreit (SKP)
• MP	Cathay Wagantall (CON)
Area
• City	25.77 km2 (9.95 sq mi)
Elevation [2]	500 m (1,600 ft)
Population  (2021)[3]
• City	16,280
• Density	449.8/km2 (1,165/sq mi)
• Metro	18,905
• Metro density	22.4/km2 (58/sq mi)
Time zone	UTC−6 (CST)
• Summer (DST)	UTC−6 (CST[4])
Forward sortation area	S3N
Area code	306
Highways	Hwy 16 / Hwy 9 / Hwy 10 / Hwy 52
Post office established	January 1, 1884[5]
Website	City of Yorkton
[6][7]

Yorkton is a city located in south-eastern Saskatchewan, Canada. It is about 450 kilometres (280 mi) north-west of Winnipeg and 300 kilometres (190 mi) south-east of Saskatoon and is the sixth largest city in the province.

Yorkton was founded in 1882 and incorporated as a city in 1928. The city is bordered by the rural municipalities of Orkney to the north, west, and south, and Wallace on the east.

History

In 1882 a group of businessmen and investors formed the York Farmers Colonization Company. Authorized to issue up to $300,000 in debentures and lenient government credit terms on land purchases encouraged company representatives to visit the District of Assiniboia of the North-West Territories with the intent to view some crown land available near the Manitoba border. They were impressed with what they saw and the group purchased portions of six townships near the Little Whitesand River (now Yorkton Creek) for the purpose of settlement and to establish a centre for trade there.^[8] This centre would become known as York Colony.^[9]

The company founded the settlers' colony on the banks of the Little Whitesand River where lots were given freely to settlers who purchased land from them. The colony remained at its site until 1889. It was originally located at PT SE 1/4 13-26-4 W2M.^[10]

In 1889 the rail line was extended to the Yorkton area. It was at this time the colony townsite relocated alongside the new rail line.^[11]

Geography

Yorkton is located in the aspen parkland ecosystem.^[12] The terrain is mainly one of agriculture and there is no forestry industry.^[13] It is also in an area of black calcareous chernozemic soils.^[12][13] The Yorkton area was located on the edge of an area of a maximum glacial lake.^[13] The quaternary geology has left the area as a moraine plain consisting of glacial deposits.^[12] The bedrock geology is the Pembina Member of Vermillion River Formation and Riding Mountain Formation. Yorkton is located in the physiographic region of the Quill Lake-Yorkton Plain region of the Saskatchewan Plains Region.^[13]

Climate

Yorkton has a humid continental climate (Köppen climate classification Dfb), with extreme seasonal temperatures. It has warm summers and cold winters, with the average daily temperatures ranging from −17.9 °C (−0.2 °F) in January to 17.8 °C (64.0 °F) in July.

The highest temperature ever recorded in Yorkton was 40.6 °C (105 °F) on 19 July 1941.^[14] The coldest temperature ever recorded was −46.1 °C (−51 °F) on 20 January 1943.^[15]