Lying on the Moose Jaw River in the south-central part of the province, it is situated on the Trans-Canada Highway, 77 km (48 mi) west of Regina.

Moose Jaw is an industrial centre and a critical railway junction for the area's agricultural produce.

[citation needed] The confluence of the Moose Jaw River and Thunder Creek was chosen and registered in 1881 as a site for a division point for the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR), whose construction was significant in the Confederation of Canada.

Marked on a map as Moose Jaw Bone Creek in an 1857 survey by surveyor John Palliser,[8] two theories exist regarding how the city was named.

The first is it comes from the Plains Cree name moscâstani-sîpiy meaning "a warm place by the river", indicative of the protection from the weather the Coteau range provides to the river valley containing the city[9] and also the Plains Cree word moscâs, meaning warm breezes.

The area surrounding Moose Jaw has many cloudless days, making it a good site for training pilots.

The facility changed its name to CFB Moose Jaw in 1968 and is now Canada's primary military flight training centre and the home of 431 (Air Demonstration) Squadron (aka the "Snowbirds").

In the Royal Canadian Air Force, the lodger unit is often called 15 Wing Moose Jaw.

Involved in peacekeeping operations in Cyprus, the Golan Heights, Bosnia and Croatia, the regiment has also provided aid during floods and forest fires in the prairies.

Following the death of Queen Elizabeth in 2022, an opinion piece in the National Post noted that the late monarch had "visited Moose Jaw more often than she did Manhattan.

"[11] Moose Jaw's climate is transitional between semiarid and humid continental (Köppen BSk and Dfb, respectively).

Moose Jaw's winters are long, cold and dry, while its summers are short but very warm and relatively wet.

These neighbourhoods are divided into four community associations: South Hill, East Side, North West and Sunningdale/VLA/West Park.

Temple Garden's Mineral Spa,[36] Tunnels of Moose Jaw,[37] and History of Transportation Western Development Museum.

Improved harvest, transport and road construction technology have made the large inland terminals more economically viable.

Meat-processing plants, salt, potash, urea fertilizer, anhydrous ammonia and ethanol producers abound in this area with easy transport access to the Trans–Canada Highway.

The car club at Moose Jaw agreed to the restoration of Tom Sukanen's ship at their museum site.

Sukanen was a Finnish homesteader who settled near Birsay and hoped to travel home again on a ship he assembled near the South Saskatchewan River.

In response, approximately 85 members of the gay and lesbian community marched down Main St. to Crescent Park, where an estimated 150 people gathered to speak out against Bryant.

[56] 2SLGBTQ tourist attractions include a rainbow-coloured bench[57] on Main Street, in front of the Rainbow Retro Thrift Shop, and a mural on the back of the Rainbow Retro building that depicts events and symbols from local 2SLGBTQ history, including representations of the Anita Bryant march, the Indigenous two-spirit presence in Saskatchewan, the potluck and coffee social events that were central to 2SLGBTQ community development, and several landmark pride flag raisings.

Every July, the four-day Saskatchewan Festival of Words showcases top Canadian writers from a wide variety of genres.

It features a creek, picnic tables, a library, an art museum, a playground, an outdoor swimming pool, water park, a tennis court, lawn bowling field and an amphitheatre.

While Passage to Fortune is construed by many visitors to be historically accurate,[60] there is no evidence to suggest that Chinese Canadians lived in the tunnels of the tours outside of minimal anecdotal testimonies.

[64] Tour attendees are then guided through the tunnels from the position of Chinese workers indentured to the fictional laundry owner Mr. Burrows who were forced to live underground.

[68] There has long been anecdotal evidence that American mobster Al Capone visited Moose Jaw or had interests in the bootlegging operations.

No written or photographic proof exists of Capone's presence, but several firsthand accounts from Moose Javians who claim to have met him have been documented.

"[72] As in most Canadian cities, hockey has played a large part in Moose Jaw's sporting culture.

Moose Jaw Transit provides local bus service to urban areas of the city.

[2] The bus fleet was replaced in 2008 by new low-floor accessible vehicles under the federal government's one-time public transit capital funding program.

Moose Jaw has four photo radar cameras, including two which operate on the TransCanada Highway passing through the city.