The first traces of living people in the area date from the younger half of the Stone Age.

In the early Middle Ages Selm was ruled by the count of Cappenberg, then by the bishop of Münster.

The coal miners and their families lived in the Beifang quarter, which had in the origin a very rural landscape.

After World War II numerous inhabitants from Beifang found work in Lünen, in a coal mine called Zeche Minister Achenbach.

In 1975 Bork [de], a village in the southern neighbourhood, was annexed to a part of Selm, which obtained city status in 1977.