 Early counts of Northwest Territories' population tend to exclude in indigenous inhabitants of the territory.The territory's population drops at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries are due to its reduction in size, as Yukon, then Saskatchewan and Alberta were carved out of its territory, and the same with Nunavut a century later.Yukon's population spike at the turn of the 20th century is due to the Klondike Gold Rush, when an estimated 100,000 people tried to reach the Klondike goldfields between 1896 and 1899, of whom only around 30,000 to 40,000 eventually did.