"Beenup", a corruption of the Aboriginal name associated with nearby Beenyup Brook, was the spelling that had been applied to a railway siding there.

The uncorrupted form, "Bienyup" received mention in surveyor Robert Austin's account of an expedition through the area in 1848.

[5] Little has been documented of the Aboriginal occupation of the Byford area, but material traces of the district's original inhabitants have been found in numerous locations.

[6][7] By the 1890s, the area was settled by a small number of large landowners, with names of early settlers included Lazenby, Mead, and Liddelow.

[8] Mead was an enterprising farmer with numerous landholdings in the foothills between the Serpentine River and the Wongong Brook,[9] and at East Rockingham.

[10] Majority of early settlers in Byford lived in poor conditions before they obtained building supplies for houses, and often had large families with up to 13 children.

In 1903, John Millard (a former manager of the Bunning Bros brickworks in East Perth) established The Cardup Steam Pressed Brick Company.

Two years later, he entered into partnership with Atkins and Law, a rising giant in Western Australia's commercial world.

With an injection of capital from Atkins and Law, the brickworks grew to become one of the state's leading producers of pressed shale brick.

Like the brickworks operating at Cardup and Armadale, this one exploited the shale deposits of the escarpment to produce high quality pressed brick and used the railway to transport the finished product to customers.

[citation needed] Shortly after the brickworks had been established at Beenup, local land owner Mr C C Blythe (of Blythewood Park Estate) initiated the planning of another townsite on the eastern side of the rail line - a convenient distance from the brickworks and highway.

[citation needed] The original 1906 township was located south-west of the intersection of Soldiers Road and Mead Street[15] but it appears that little if any housing was built in that area until much later in the 20th century.

[7] Some time later a stop bearing the name Beenup was established in the vicinity of the present day township.

[18] In the 1920s the estate of a local land-owner, Samuel Bateman, was subdivided into smaller farms for the Group Settlement Scheme.

[7] Following the Fall of Singapore, a secret armament depot was established in Byford in 1942, due to its rail access and being far enough from the coast to be safe from a seaborne attack by the Japanese.

[21] Its security was provided by the Naval Dockyard Police (NDP), which was the last branch of the Royal Australian Army to be horse-borne.

], Byford has become an extension of the Perth metropolitan area, connected to the Kwinana Freeway by Thomas Road, and has experienced a substantial rise in population.

Historically, Byford's rural land supported sheep, beef and dairy cattle, orchards, and a vineyard (Sunrays, owned by the Vlasich family),[25] but in recent decades there has been an increase in hobby farms geared to equine pursuits, and more recently housing estates with generous lot sizes.

Subsequent sculptures represent Charlie Knox, a traffic inspector in Byford in the 1940s and 1950s; Sister Wossley who nursed children in the 1940s;[45] a returned serviceman; Rivorse, who ran a dead heat with Eurythmic in the 1919 Perth cup;[46] two boxing kangaroos; a brickworker who worked at the brickworks in the 1920s; a cockatoo; and a kangaroo at the southern entrance.

[51] Byford John Calvin school was opened on 29 January 1999 next to the Free Reformed Church and is private.

The college is named after its patron Dom Rosendo Salvado, who inspired the school's motto “Peace, Justice, Compassion.

In March 2017, Department of Fire and Emergency Services deemed it high risk to bushfire due to surrounding bushland.

As part of the Metronet Byford Rail Extension Project, the section of Thomas Road before the intersection was raised in order to remove the train crossing previously there.

[63] The new station will be situated opposite George street and will consist of three platforms serving passengers of the Australind and Armadale lines.

[64] Rita Saffioti, the state's Minister of Transport, and Hugh Jones, local Member of the Legislative Assembly, spoke of the station by saying it would boost Byford's future development and growth.