Establishment of the route With the outbreak of hostilities between
France and
Great Britain in 1793, part of the
War of the First Coalition, the
Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada (now Ontario),
John Graves Simcoe, was concerned about the possibility of the United States entering
British North America in support of their French allies. In particular, the location of Newark (now
Niagara-on-the-Lake), the first and former capital of Upper Canada, was in danger of being attacked by the Americans from the nearby border. Additionally, U.S. forces could easily sever British access to the
upper lakes at
Lake St. Clair or the
Detroit River, cutting the colony off from the important trading post at
Michilimackinac. , the first
lieutenant governor of Upper Canada, created the roadway that later became Yonge Street. Simcoe planned to move the capital to a better-protected location and build overland routes to the upper lakes as soon as possible. He established
York, as Toronto was originally called, with its
naturally enclosed harbour, as a defensible site for a new capital. To provide communications between the site and the upper lakes, he planned two connected roads, the first running north from York to
Lake Simcoe, (then named
Lake aux Claies), the second joining Lake Simcoe with
Georgian Bay. This would allow overland transport to the upper lakes, bypassing U.S. strongholds. The route from Lake Ontario to Lake Simcoe is still known as Yonge Street, and the second leg to Georgian Bay was long known as the
Penetanguishene Road. Before the construction of Yonge Street, a
portage route, the
Toronto Carrying-Place Trail, had already linked Lakes Ontario and Simcoe. On September 25, 1793, Simcoe and a small party of soldiers and native guides started northward along the trail, establishing the Pine Fort on the western branch of the
Holland River, near the modern location of
Bradford. Stopping only to rename Lake aux Claies "Lake Simcoe" in memory of his father, the party continued north to
Lake Couchiching, and then down the
Severn River to Georgian Bay. Here he selected the site of
Penetanguishene as the location for a new naval base and port. On his return, he met with an
Ojibway named 'Old Sail' and was shown a new route along another arm of the trail, this one starting on the eastern branch of the Holland River and thereby avoiding the marshes of the western branch (today's
Holland Marsh). They left Pine Fort on October 11 and reached York on the 15th. Simcoe selected this eastern route for his new road, moving the southern end from the
Rouge River to the western outskirts of the settled area in York, and the northern end to a proposed new town on the Holland River, St. Albans. The road was actually called Concession 1 at first with Concessions 2 etc. on either side. For instance Concession 1 Whitchurch Township faces Yonge St. and goes east to Concession 2, which starts at Bayview Ave. Concession 1 King Township faces Yonge St. and goes west to Concession 2, which starts at Bathurst St. There are 10 concessions in York County going east and west from Concession 1, Yonge Street. The east side ending at then-Ontario County, now Durham Region, and the west side ending at Peel County (now Peel Region).
Construction of Yonge Street The following spring, Simcoe instructed Deputy Surveyor General
Augustus Jones to blaze a small trail marking the route. In the summer of 1794,
William Berczy was the first to take up the offer, leading a group of 64 families northeast of Toronto to found the town of
German Mills, in modern
Markham. By the end of 1794, Berczy's settlers had cleared the route around
Thornhill. However, the settlement was hit by a series of setbacks and road construction stalled. supervising the
Queen's York Rangers cutting trees during the construction of Yonge Street in 1795 Work on the road started again in 1795 when the
Queen's Rangers took over. They began their work at
Eglinton Avenue and proceeded north, reaching the site of St. Albans on 16 February 1796. Expansion of the trail into a road was a condition of settlement for farmers along the route, who were required to spend 12 days a year to clear the road of logs, subsequently removed by convicted drunks as part of their sentences. The southern end of the road was in use in the first decade of the 19th century, and became passable all the way to the northern end in 1816. The road was extended south from Eglinton to
Bloor Street in 1796 by Berczy, who needed a route to his warehouse on the Toronto lakeshore. The area south of Bloor Street proved too swampy for a major road. A path did exist between Queen and Bloor Streets, but was called the "road to Yonge Street", rather than being considered part of the street itself due to its poor condition. Over time the creeks were rerouted and the swamps drained. In 1812 the route was extended from Queen Street to the harbour, and in 1828 the entire southern portion was solidified with gravel. St. Albans never developed as Simcoe had hoped, but the town of
Holland Landing eventually grew up on the site, a somewhat more descriptive name. Holland Landing was settled by
Quakers who moved into the area after having left the United States in the aftermath of the
American Revolution. The settlers were branching out from their initial town of "Upper Yonge Street", which later became
Newmarket. The road almost served its original military purpose during the
War of 1812, when construction of a new fleet of first-rate ships began on the Lakes, necessitating the shipment of a large anchor from England for use on a
frigate under construction on
Lake Huron. The war ended while the anchor was still being moved, and now lies just outside Holland Landing in a park named in its honour.
Evolution of Yonge Street Bears were known to wander onto Yonge Street in the early days of Toronto. In 1809,
Lieutenant Fawcett, of the
100th Regiment, came across a large bear on the street and cut its head open with his sword. In 1824, work began to extend Yonge Street to
Kempenfelt Bay near
Barrie. A northwestern extension was branched off the original Yonge Street in Holland Landing (present-day Holland Landing Road and the stretch of York Road 1 running northwest of
Bathurst Street) and ran into the new settlement of
Bradford before turning north towards Barrie (with the Bradford-Barrie stretch being the only part of the later Highway 11 apart from the original section ever to be named Yonge). Work was completed by 1827, making connections with the Penetanguishene Road. In 1833, the legislature voted to "
macadamise" some portions of the dirt road. The decision was made to withdraw the military
garrison in
Penetanguishene in 1852. A year later, the
Northern Railway of Canada was built along this established route, between Toronto and
Kempenfelt Bay and extended to
Collingwood by 1855. Settlement along the Penetanguishene Road pre-dated the road itself. Subsequent extensions of Yonge Street (though never named as such) which later became the more northerly parts of Highway 11, built in the 1830s (some with military strategy in mind), pushed settlement northeast along the shores of Lake Simcoe. By 1860 the
Muskoka Road penetrated the southern skirts of the
Canadian Shield, advancing towards
Lake Nipissing. The government of Upper Canada had a limited tax base and a vast area to settle, so they asked private individuals to build and maintain roads in exchange for the right to toll wayfarers. This was a commonplace arrangement at the time: For example, a 13-km stretch of
Davenport Road between the
Humber River and the
Don River had no less than five
tollbooths spaced along its length. In the 1830s, the tollbooth near
York Mills'
Miller Tavern and north of
Montgomery's Tavern was "a tiny two-storey building on the west side of Yonge" at the top of the hill "with a roof stretched over the roadway to a support on the far side." A horse-drawn
streetcar line was completed on Yonge Street in Toronto in September 1861 and operated by the
Toronto Street Railway. The line went from Scollard Street to King Street. Streetcar service would be electrified in Toronto by 1892.
Confederation and the construction of the
Canadian Pacific Railway further diminished the importance of Yonge Street, as the new Dominion of Canada heralded the construction of east–west trade routes spanning the continent. By the 1870s,
Henry Scadding, author of
Toronto of Old, declared that Penetanguishene did not have the importance to need an approach such as the "extension of the Yonge Street Road." During the late 1800s, the
Toronto and York Radial Railway used the Yonge Street
right-of-way, originally to the town of North Toronto, but expanding over the years all the way to Sutton, on southern Lake Simcoe. The Radial Railway ran along the eastern side of the street, allowing the prevailing westerly winds to remove snow from the slightly raised rails. The arrival of the
Canadian Northern Railway in 1906 lessened traffic on the Radial, but it was not until Yonge became a major route for cars that the Radial truly fell into disuse. The last TYRR train north from Toronto ran on March 16, 1930. The line was then purchased by the townships north of the city and re-incorporated as
North Yonge Railways, running service for another eighteen years before operations ended, along with service on numerous other portions of the Radial lines, in 1948. The space it formerly occupied was used to expand the road between Aurora and Newmarket.
Yonge Street Corridor The Yonge Street corridor has evolved significantly over the past century, and is currently seeing a new wave of mixed-use high rise developments. The everlasting construction of office buildings, high-rise residential towers, along with a variety of shops populating the major corridor across the towns and cities it traverses. This unique and extensive built-form encourages residents from the East and Western sections of the region to unite in the heart of the GTA. Stretching through the center of the Greater Toronto Area, Yonge Street has transformed into a vital route, accommodating not only vehicular traffic but also serving as a central hub for transportation and commerce. The corridor is home to the
Yonge-University Subway Line, serving Toronto, Vaughan, and soon Richmond Hill as the government of Ontario prepares for the construction of the Yonge North Subway Extension. In addition, the
Yonge Street Rapidway located North of Toronto, is a comprehensive BRT (Bus Rapid Transit) in York Region allowing for convenient access to
Finch Subway Station, in Toronto. Moreover, Yonge Street hosts numerous modes of public transportation, which connects people to major infrastructure spanning over 30 kilometres.
Canada's first Subway From the early 1900s onwards, there were several proposals to build a
subway for streetcars on Yonge Street, given the high demand for north–south travel within downtown Toronto. Following World War 2, the Toronto Transit Commission proposed a north–south
subway line along the Yonge Street corridor between
Union Station and
Eglinton Avenue. Approved by voters in 1946, construction began in September 1949, with disruptive
cut-and-cover construction on Yonge Street taking place between College Avenue and Front Street. The line has subsequently been extended several times, most recently to
Vaughan,
York Region in 2017. The line – now
Line 1 Yonge–University – is the busiest subway line in Canada, and one of the busiest in North America. Running (mostly) concurrent with Yonge as far north as Barrie, then continuing beyond through central and northern Ontario to the Ontario–
Minnesota border at
Rainy River, the highway was over long. But Yonge Street could only be called the longest street in the world if it were fully synonymous with Highway 11 over the highway's entire length, which has never been the case. The original historic alignment of Yonge Street diverges from the former Highway 11 (now York Regional 1) in
East Gwillimbury, one kilometre north of Green Lane; at this junction, York Road 1 diverts northwest, while Yonge Street turns right at the intersection and then loops back to continue the straight alignment. It then continues, ending at Queensville Side Road in
Holland Landing. Approximately 350 metres further west at a jog, it runs north for about 1.8 kilometres, stopping at a dead end just past the Silver Lakes Golf and Country Club; further north, the name picks up again as an unpaved farm road which ends at Ravenshoe Road west of
Keswick and just south of
Lake Simcoe. When the final leg of Highway 11 between
Atikokan and Rainy River was completed in 1965, the Rainy River Chamber of Commerce responded with a
publicity stunt requesting that Toronto change the name of Yonge Street to Atwood Avenue so that the highway could have the same street name at both ends, but this did not occur. The claim was first added by the
Guinness Book of Records in 1977 at the request of Toronto writer Jay Myers, supplanting
Figueroa Street in
Los Angeles. Myers had sought the designation after writing and publishing a book about the history of the street. and later claiming in 1953 that Yonge was the longest street in the world because it purportedly extended to
Cochrane, which was then and still is the point at which Highway 11 switches from a north–south alignment to an east–west alignment toward
Nipigon. It continued to be listed by Guinness until 1999, when it was dropped in favour of recognizing the
Pan-American Highway as the world's longest motorable road. As a result, Highway 11 does not start until
Crown Hill just outside
Barrie, several kilometres north of where the name Yonge Street ends.
2000s In 2008, Toronto's first
pedestrian scramble was opened at the intersection of Yonge and
Dundas Streets. On April 23, 2018, a
driver intentionally struck numerous pedestrians, killing 11 and injuring 15 others. The attack started at the intersection of Yonge Street and
Finch Avenue and proceeded south along the sidewalks of Yonge Street to near
Sheppard Avenue.{{cite news|date=November 12, 2021|title='A huge loss': Yonge Street van attack victim Amaresh Tesfamariam missed 'every day' ==Cultural significance==