The first building used as a school in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada, is currently located on Franklin (50th) Avenue at the south end of New Town, the city's downtown section. It is a small log cabin dating to the mid-1930s. It was designated a City of Yellowknife Heritage Site in 1998, and listed on the Canadian Register of Historic Places in 2004.

Originally built by a local gold mining company, it was repurposed as a school in 1938, as the city's population had grown rapidly enough to require a school. Yellowknife Education District No. 1 was created to manage the school; its school board was the first democratically elected government body in the territory. Even with a 20-member student body, it was small enough that classes had to be held in two sessions; they were often interrupted by passing miners gawking or mistaking the building for a bar.

After two years, the new district moved to larger quarters to accommodate a growing population, and eventually the district was able to build its own school. the log cabin then became a laundry and private residence in later years before being offered to the city as a historical site. In 1987, the building was moved from its original location in Old Town to its present location on Mildred Hall elementary school property where it has since been restored to provide tours of early education in Yellowknife. It is currently closed to the public; eventual plans are to use it as a museum of Yellowknife's early educational history.

The building is located on the west side of Franklin (50th) Avenue opposite 54th Street, at the south end of downtown Yellowknife, known locally as New Town. It is in between the offices of Yellowknife Education District No. 1 and Mildred Hall School, both of which are set further back from the street. On the east side of Franklin is the modern high-rise Yellowknife campus of Aurora College.

To the north along Franklin is the city's main business district, with more modern high-rise buildings including several of Yellowknife's tallest. Hotels line the street for several blocks to the south. Along the west side, the school complex gives way to residential neighbourhoods around 57th Street. The surrounding terrain is generally level, as the high ground of about 198 metres (650 ft) in elevation at the crest of the rise from Yellowknife Bay of Great Slave Lake 1 km (1.6 miles) to the east and the smaller Frame Lake 200 metres (660 ft) to the west.

A chainlink fence sets off the building itself and its short concrete walk from the sidewalk. It is a log cabin, 4.9 by 5.5 metres (16 by 18 ft), one storey high on a concrete foundation topped by a shingled hipped roof. Two small planters and a low wooden stoop are in front.

The main entrance is in the centre of the east (front) facade; it is set with a door of untreated vertical board and padlocked. The bay to its west has a wooden interpretive plaque where a window was once located. On the south facade there is a horizontal double-hung sliding sash window with six square panes on the west and four on the east set in a plain wooden surround. On the opposite side is a single six-pane casement window with the same wooden surround and wooden paneling covering the logs below. The west (rear) facade also has a single window. A narrow plain frieze at the end of the eave sets off the roofline.

Gold had been discovered in the area of what became Yellowknife around the turn of the 20th century. But the quantities were too small to warrant serious exploration. A small settlement grew in the 1920s around the fuel caches left by bush pilots, who used it as a staging area for flights further north.