History of Newmarket

 

The town was founded in 1801 as a Quaker settlement led by Timothy Rogers. A legacy of the town's fathers is the Quaker-founded independent school, Pickering College, which moved here in 1908. Several mills were soon built to supply the residents, and the amount of goods produced by the local mills and farms earned it the name "New Market" (as opposed to Toronto, the "old market".) The mills were powered by the flow of the East Holland River.

Newmarket was incorporated as a village in 1857 and a town in 1880. By the 1950s, Newmarket was experiencing a suburban building boom due to its proximity to Toronto. The expansion has continued into more recent decades, and the townsite now includes two formerly distinct rural hamlets, Armitage (on Yonge Street south of Mulock Drive) and Bogarttown (at the intersection of Mulock Drive and Leslie Street).

Newmarket is a thriving community unto itself, with a strong awareness of its own history. Newmarket is not a new bedroom community; it is a very old and industrious town that is rich with heritage.