Boats of the Mackenzie River watershed

The Mackenzie River in Canada's Northwest Territories is a historic waterway, used for centuries by Indigenous peoples, specifically the Dene, as a travel and hunting corridor.

In the 1780s, Peter Pond, a trader with the North West Company became the first known European to visit this watershed and begin viable trade with the Athapascan-speaking Dene of these rivers.

In 1898 the Klondike Gold Rush gave an impetus to the exploration of the Canadian North and the Mackenzie River basin was promoted as the best route to the Yukon if one was departing from Edmonton.

In the 1920s, police, church missions, government agents, oil and mining companies, prospectors, and competing fur trade interests descended on the Northwest Territories and water transportation services boomed.

MacGregor, James Grierson (1974), Paddle wheels to bucket-wheels on the Athabasca, McClelland and Stewart, Toronto, ISBN 0-7710-5450-5 The Edmonton Bulletin newspaper articles, 1920–1924.