About 4,000 kilometres south of Whitehorse, over the Rockies and not far from Dallas, Texas, there’s another Yukon.
It’s the hometown of country music superstar Garth Brooks, and the Czech Capital of Oklahoma (named for the wave of immigrants who arrived following World War I). It’s a bedroom community of Oklahoma City and the place where, in 1949, a cow named Grady attracted national media attention after getting stuck in a silo for four days.
But why is it named after
the Yukon? The answer to that question seems to be a bit of a mystery.
The prevailing theory is that town founder A. N. Spencer named it in honour of the Klondike Gold Rush. Presumably, this 69-square kilometre stretch of land in the south-central United States would also be a land of riches, like its northern namesake.