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Though it's actually just over Alberta's northern border in the Northwest Territories, FORT SMITH (population around 2500) is the only conceivable base for exploring Wood Buffalo National Park. Virtually the last settlement for several hundred kilometres east and north, the town developed along one of the major water routes to the north. Its site was particularly influenced by the need to avoid a violent set of rapids, an interruption to waterborne transport that required a 25-kilometre portage (a stretch of water where canoes had to be carried on land). The Dene natives' name for the area, not surprisingly, was Thebacha, meaning "along the rapids". In 1872 the Hudson's Bay Company built a post, Fort Fitzgerald, at the rapids' southern end. Two years later Fort Smith was established at their northern limit. In time the settlement became the administrative capital of the NWT (despite being only a kilometre from Alberta), a function it fulfilled until as recently as 1967, the year the Canadian federal government promoted Yellowknife to the role. The disappearance of government jobs has left its mark on the town, as has the opening of the all-weather road between Hay River and Yellowknife, which captured a lot of the freight that used to pass through the region by boat. Nonetheless it's a reasonable enough base, with a handful of things to see around town before visiting the park or pressing on towards Yellowknife. The Northern Life Museum , 110 King St (mid-June to early Sept daily 1-5pm), is worth a few minutes to enjoy an excellent collection of traditional artefacts, crafts, fur-trading memorabilia and archive photographs. You might also want to glance at the old Fort Smith Mission Historic Park , on the corner of Mercredi Avenue and Breynat Street, former home to the region's bishop, who for years took on many of Fort Smith's bureaucratic responsibilities. For a chance of seeing the area's famous white pelicans, head for the Slave River Lookout on Marine Drive, where there's a telescope trained on their nesting site.
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