Ontario's first colonial administrator, John Graves Simcoe, named the street for his friend Sir George Yonge, an expert on ancient Roman roads.

[5] Yonge Street was integral to the original planning and settlement of western Upper Canada in the 1790s, forming the basis of the concession roads in Ontario today.

The street is a commercial main thoroughfare rather than a ceremonial one, with the Downtown Yonge shopping and entertainment district containing landmarks such as the Eaton Centre and Yonge–Dundas Square.

Yonge Street originates on the northern shore of Toronto Bay at Queens Quay as a four-lane arterial road (speed limit 40 km/h) proceeding north.

The elevated Gardiner Expressway and the congested rail lines of the Toronto railway viaduct on their approach to Union Station pass over Yonge Street.

It has been outfitted with large video screens, and developed with retail shopping arcades, fountains and seating in a bid to become "Toronto's Times Square".

The lower-density residential community and park-like setting here represent an interlude between North Toronto and the newer high-rise district beyond, towering over the valley.

North York Centre features numerous residential and office towers, most with ground-floor commercial uses, with some stretches of older two-storey buildings, many slated for redevelopment.

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.

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.

The following spring, Simcoe instructed Deputy Surveyor General Augustus Jones to blaze a small trail marking the route.

Certain seasons saw the muddy sidewalks of York in deplorable condition, and Yonge Street was renowned as being particularly bad, making it difficult to transport loads along it.

[10] 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.

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).

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.

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.

[21] 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 everlasting construction of office buildings,[22] high-rise residential towers, along with a variety of shops populating the major corridor across the towns and cities it traverses.

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.

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.

[26][27] 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.

[33] 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 1,896 kilometres (1,178 mi) long.

[36] 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.

After major sporting victories thousands of people will gather on its downtown portions, particularly near Dundas Square, to celebrate, and the street will be closed to vehicular traffic.

[44] The intersection of Yonge and Dundas Streets, centred on the plaza at Yonge-Dundas Square, has been closed on occasion to host free concerts, including performances by R.E.M.

[45][46] Toronto's annual LGBTQ Pride, Orange Order,[47] and Santa Claus parades also use Yonge Street for a significant portion of their routes.

Yonge Street was also the subject or setting for an SCTV comedy sketch featuring John Candy, Joe Flaherty, Andrea Martin, and Jayne Eastwood.

The sketch, Garth & Gord & Fiona & Alice, was a parody of the Canadian film Goin' Down the Road, about young men from the provinces discovering the bright lights of Yonge Street.

[50] The Yonge North Subway Extension represents a long-anticipated development, first included in York Region's plans since 1994 and subsequently integrated into the Province's transportation agenda in 2007.

Also see Table II that shows comparison by yearly averaged growth from 1802 to 1825 p. 138 (d) Firth, p. 10 p. 10 P.Russell to Elizabeth Russell, Sep. 1, 1793 Also in Eric ArthurToronto No Mean City" Toronto, 1964 p. 138