Landmarks include the Portlands Energy Centre, Leslie Barns (streetcar facility), Ashbridges Bay Wastewater Treatment Plant, and the now out-of-service Hearn Generating Station.

Much of the Port Lands were initially part of Ashbridge's Bay, which consisted of a five-square-kilometre triangular area of marshes and ponds surrounded by sandbars.

By the 1880s, Gooderham and Worts was heavily using the marsh to dispose of waste from pigs and cattle, as well as wheat swill from their distilling operations.

The plan was to drain and fill in the marsh in order to address health concerns, and to develop the area for industry and shipping.

[1] In the 1950s, the Leslie Spit, the Hearn Generating Station, the Commissioners Incinerator and the Gardiner Expressway were built, the latter over the mouth of the Don River.

[2] By this time the Port Lands were considered to be the largest under-developed and under-used urban space in North America.

[4] In 2017, Waterfront Toronto received $1.25 billion from municipal, provincial and federal levels of government to clean up the Port Lands and protect the area from flooding by naturalizing the mouth of the Don River.

It opened on November 5, 1917 to serve workers employed at munitions factories in the Port Lands during World War I.

A train would operate every one to three weeks to bring five or six carloads of chemicals to the Ashbridges Bay Wastewater Treatment Plant on the east side of Leslie Street.

TPLC is a City corporation that manages real estate assets and promotes development in the Port Lands.

TPLC is the largest landowner in the Port Lands with 160 hectares (400 acres) in its portfolio,[9] and acts as landlord with over 80 tenants as of 2015.

Named after the members of the Toronto Harbour Commission, Commissioners Street is the spine across the area north of the ship channel.

The Portlands Energy Centre, a cogeneration power plant, is situated beside the now defunct Richard L. Hearn Generating Station.

This consolidated the operations of several concrete companies including Essroc, Lafarge, Metrix, and St. Mary's into one location.

[10] Other industrial include road salt storage, a roof shingle manufacturing and a waste transfer station on the site of a deactivated incinerator.

The Pinewood Toronto Studios (formerly FilmPort) was built on the 11 acres (4.5 ha) site of a former Esso oil tank farm.

The south-western corner of the Port Lands is home to Cherry Beach, parkland similar to the Toronto Islands but surrounded by a mostly vacant, industrial setting.

Cirque du Soleil presented a touring version of several shows under the Grand Chapiteau on vacant lands of the area between 2007 and 2017.