|
Yonge Street (pronounced "young"), located in Ontario, Canada, is a major arterial street in Toronto and a provincial highway. Yonge Street has been been listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the longest street in the world and is nearly 2,000 km long.
Yonge Street starts literally at the edge of Lake Ontario in Toronto. From there, it runs north to Cochrane (about as far north as the roads run), gradually turns to the west as it goes around Lake Superior to Thunder Bay, and then runs to the town of Rainy River, bordering the state of Minnesota, United States. As "Highway 11", Yonge Street officially stretched 1,896 km (1,178 miles), but changes in provincial responsibility separated the now locally funded and controlled Yonge Street from Highway 11 during the 1990s. As a result, Provincial Highway 11 does not start until after the town of Barrie, Ontario, just north of where the name "Yonge Street" ends (although there is a break in the naming in Bradford where it is called "Bridge Street". This has led to disputes over the "longest street in the world" claim of the approximately 95 km street. In addition, much of Highway 11 north of Barrie has been realigned, particularly for the first 250 km or so as it has (or will be) been upgraded to an expressway or freeway from Barrie to North Bay, which officially disputes the distinction as much of the current highway is not on the original Yonge Street.
Yonge Street is said to have started as a trail created by Huron Indians. The trail was used by numerous European explorers, such as Samuel de Champlain in 1615, and later became a military route. It was named Yonge Street in 1793, after Sir George Yonge, the British Secretary of War at the time, by John Graves Simcoe, the Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada (now Ontario). Simcoe also chose the site around the road as the Town of York (now Toronto), and had it paved to allow easier use by the military as a north-south route.
While still an important travel route across the province, as part of the Trans-Canada Highway, Yonge Street itself is home or close to many attractions in Toronto, including street and theatre performances, the Eaton Centre, the Hockey Hall of Fame and at the very start of the road, 'One Yonge Street', the offices of the Toronto Star and also Sam the Record Man. The Yonge Line of the Toronto Subway runs under Yonge Street from King Street to Finch Avenue.
External links
|
