The town economy is based around servicing the farming sector, and tourism, with good road links but little public transport.

[6]: 29  The crossing of the Muddy Creek became quite busy as part of the route from Melbourne to the goldfields at Beechworth and the eastern highlands, and also from them to Ballarat.

After a blacksmith set up a forge and dwelling at the crossing, and a complaint from the local landholder, a town was surveyed and laid out in 1855 by T.W.Pinniger.

[7]: 7  Apparently under instruction from the State Surveyor-General Andrew Clarke, it was named after Colonel Lacy Walter Giles Yea[8] – a British Army colonel killed in June of that year at the Battle of the Great Redan in the Crimean War, and who had been Clarke's commanding officer in England in 1830s.

[10] Yea expanded under the influx of hopeful prospectors, both as a natural overnight stopping place on the route from Melbourne to other goldfields,[6]: 130  but especially when gold was discovered in the local area in the late 1850s.

[7] After the gold mining ended the town survived on servicing farming and timber getting (chiefly from the Murrindindi forests).

Creameries around the district substantially increased the income of local farmers, and considerable amounts of butter were shipped to Melbourne.

[11] A major threat to the township was the Trawool Water Scheme (announced for implementation in 1908), which would have almost certainly meant the drowning of the town.

It is 112 kilometres (70 mi) north-east of Melbourne at 172 metres (564 ft) above sea-level, on the northern slopes of the Great Dividing Range.

The centre of the town is on the flood plain of the Yea River, but the residential area to the south extends onto the slopes of the nearby hills.

[6]: 133, 156  Although subject to (sometimes severe) financial constraints at various times, and the substantial costs involved in maintaining the local road infrastructure in the face of fires and floods, the shire managed to develop some substantial public facilities, and to successfully lobby for improved transport and communication links to the area.

[19] Census records show the population of Yea has remained relatively stable since the beginning of the 20th century, except for a dip in the post second-world-war period.

These included pastoral agriculture for the entire period, gold mining before 1900, and timber cutting and dairying from then until the late 20th century.

[6]: 217, 298, 294  The Yea Saleyards has become a significant livestock selling centre for Central Victoria, with sales occurring at least every month.

[28][29] The earliest available record of a cricket match in Yea is for January 1869, against a Murrundindi side,[30] though formal creation of a club seems not to have occurred until 1872.

[33] Although signs at the entrances to the town state that Yea is the birthplace of olympic equestrian Bill Roycroft, he was actually born in Melbourne and grew up in Flowerdale.

[39] The Yea Flora Fossil Site in Limestone Road is on the Australian National Heritage List due to the discovery of the most ancient leafy foliage so far found on earth.