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Carmacks, Yukon Territory (Canada)

1:2 image by Eugene Ipavec
Source: Canadian City Flags, Raven 18

Carmacks
Current Flag
- Design
- Symbolism
- Selection
- Designer

See also:

Carmacks

Carmacks is a village in Yukon on the Yukon River along the Klondike Highway, and at the west end of the Robert Campbell Highway from Watson Lake.

Current Flag

Text and image(s) from Canadian City Flags, Raven 18 (2011), courtesy of the North American Vexillological Association, which retains copyright. Image(s) by permission of Eugene Ipavec.

The flag of the Village of Carmacks has a white field with its logo in the centre. The logo is dominated by a naturalistic representation of a mountain in white and dark green under a semicircle formed by a blue line with a narrower blue line inside. It is flanked on each side of the semicircle by naturalistic sprigs of fireweed flower in pink. Curved above the mountain within the semicircle is CARMACKS in serif letters in dark blue. At the base is a white ribbon edged with a double border of blue, inscribed YUKON in white serif letters outlined and shaded in dark blue.
Jim Croft, Canadian City Flags, Raven 18, 2011

Symbolism

The logo in the centre of the flag depicts Tantalus Butte, one of the most famous natural landmarks in the area. The Northern Tutchone people, who lived for thousands of years in this area, called it Gun Tthi, meaning “worm hill”. They believed a giant worm with eyes like the sun lived in the hill, and if they made too much noise while travelling on the nearby Yukon River, the worm would blow a big wind which would upset their boats. In 1883, U.S. Army explorer Lt. Frederick Schwatka named the hill “Tantalus Butte” (after the son of Zeus, who was punished by being forced to stand in water that receded when he tried to drink it). Schwatka gave the butte this name as he was frustrated when traveling in the Carmacks area by the many bends in the Yukon River (expecting to reach the hill, the river would take him away again and again). In 1883, during the Klondike Gold Rush, the prospector George Washington Carmack, for whom the village is named, found and developed a seam of coal at Tantalus Butte, locally called “Coal Mine Hill”. Coal became an important economic resource to the community, as it supplied the fuel for the paddleboats plying the nearby rivers. Carmack built a cabin and a trading post here, and soon “Carmack’s Landing” became a riverboat stop at the confluence of the Yukon and Nordenskiold Rivers. The fireweed (Epilobium angustifolium), a hardy pinkish, purplish flower, is one of the first plants to bloom after a fire. The fireweed was adopted as the territorial flower in 1957 and it symbolizes Carmacks as a Yukon community.
Jim Croft, Canadian City Flags, Raven 18, 2011

Selection

The design was derived from the community’s lapel pin.
Jim Croft, Canadian City Flags, Raven 18, 2011

Designer

Unknown.
Jim Croft, Canadian City Flags, Raven 18, 2011