Yukon Transportation Museum — Attraction in Whitehorse

When attending a leading cultural establishment such as the Yukon Transportation Museum (YTM), one expects to have one's mind expanded in a probing and entertaining manner. To say that the YTM meets these expectations would be untrue. Indeed, as you leave this august institution such expectations are but a faint memory, your attention turned to the brightening horizon of enlightenment and a future of infinite possibilities, armed with your comprehensive knowledge of the Alaska Highway, local locomotion, and bush planes. So, so many bush planes.

But I haven't jumped into the comments today to discuss transportation. Verily, my best summary of the wealth of knowledge contained here would be an insult to the curators and staff who have guided the YTM to the leading position that it occupies today. Instead, I want to talk about a moose, some dried eggs, and a question.

Eleanor Moosevelt was, much like the YTM, a fixture in her community. Borne of a bull sire and a cow materfamilias, Eleanor was adopted by a group of American soldiers building the Alaska Highway. A short time later, tragedy struck. Eleanor, in what can only be assumed was a late-night fit of hunger with which we can all surely empathize, consumed a medically inadvisable amount of dried eggs and, again understandably, moved to slake her thirst with several significant gulps of water. Anyone who has ever done a fourth-grade science experiment can guess what happened next. The headline read "Eleanor Moosevelt 'Scrambled' by US Army Eggs".

So, a moose and some dried eggs. But what about the question?

In their plaque commemorating this majestic beast, the YTM copy-writers ask us to consider, is this still considered funny? Certainly the writers of the aforementioned headline thought so. And so we come to the point of this review: does tragedy + time = comedy?

The answer, in this writer's entirely subjective opinion, is a resounding yes. I'll acknowledge that reasonable people can disagree on this point. Was it an objectively terrible experience for Eleanor? Undoubtedly. Was it also a size gag, the keystone of comedy? You bet! That truth is inescapable, and while, again, a rough way to meet your end, this size gag has ensured Eleanor Moosevelt's immortality.

Immortality, as long as the YTM continues operations, which, based on this writer's experience, will be a...

Lazy, lackluster, (college student?) staff who (A.) didn't seem to know much about anything there (B.) couldn't answer simple questions regarding the exhibits, (C.) wouldn't get off their butts for even 5 minutes to place the miniature electric train set back on its track, instead claiming they needed to call someone to come and move it the 3mm needed to get it back on its track (D.) refused to refill the empty water heater for tea/coffee and instead just removed it, then pretended like it didn't exist when I asked what happened to it (E.) failed to give guided informative tours. A complete waste of taxpayer dollars in my opinion paying a half dozen kids to sit around to do nothing but guard broken down, old, delapatated junk that's just been sitting there rotting with ZERO upkeep since I last visited 5 years ago. Which, is a complete shame as there's some cool stuff there. The only real plus was that admission was included with our Beringia center tickets (which was great BTW,) as I'd have demanded my money back. Also what's the point of telling people to keep off the badly delapatated outside exhibits if you're going to just leave it all to rot with no upkeep whatsoever? ...Pretty disappointed doubt...

A decent museum with exhibits Alaska's Transportation history. The inside exhibits were well kept and maintained. The museum was not super full but seems well-funded, judging from the two handicap lifts to move people to extremely small exhibit areas.

The Highlight is the world's largest Weathervane, which consists of a former c-47 transport converted to a DC-3 and now used as a weather vane. It points with the wind so who needs a windsock at this Airport.

Overall this museum is worth a visit if you're interested equipment Dream Machines of the era. A couple of the British World War two trucks were very unique as well as the restored Diamond REO truck. Outside they have the government huge wheeled cross country transport train shown...