Newmarket: The Heart of York Region

By: Robert Terence Carter

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Synopsis: In the early 1800s, Timothy Robers, a Quaker millwright from Vermont, drew a flourishing community of fellow Quakers to the area which became the new-market for settles and traders. It soon became the commercial hub of a rich farming area. By the mid-1800s it was a central point on the Ontario, Simcoe, and Huron Railway. Over the following decades, gas deposits were confirmed there and a barge canal was built along with a street railway. In the early 20th century Newmarket languished through a long period of slow growth — wars and the Depression took a terrible toll on the small town. Yet in the 1940s it was another war that brought thousands of soldiers to Newmarket’s training camp on their way to battlefields in Europe. It took the 1960s to bring real prosperity — builders began developing the inexpensive land, industries came, and the town flourished. The pace of construction continued through the 1980s as Newmarket prepared for its busy life of today.