A good, roadside attraction is always on our list so stopping at the “World’s Smallest Desert” was a no-brainer, but we found there’s more to this area than meets the eye.
The Carcross Desert looks and feels like a tiny desert in the Yukon, but it’s really the remains of an ancient lake. If it were a real desert, it would have a hot dry climate, but the dunes here are actually the result of a glacial process. Thousands of years ago as the great sheets of ice that covered much of North America were melting, ice dams created glacial lakes that submerged some valleys under the melt of water. Sand and silt trapped in the glacier settled into the bottoms of these “lakes”.
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Near Carcross Desert is the town of Carcross, another throwback to the Klondike Gold Rush. There are some original buildings in town (like Matthew Watson General Store which is the oldest operating store in the Yukon); the White Pass & Yukon Route Railway Station is here and trains pass though regularly; and there’s a small shopping area called Carcross Commons where you can look for handmade gifts from the Tagish First Nation, Canadian maple syrup, artisan carved wood pieces, or homemade baked goods.
Carcross can get crowded as several cruise lines offer day trips here and busloads of people unload occasionally in the parking lot, but there’s enough to see and do that this won’t interfere too much with how you spend your day.
