The first European explorers to traverse Northern Yorke Peninsula were John Hill and Thomas Burr, on horseback.

Pioneer farmers cleared the land for cropping, but there was no town at Paskeville until 1878, when a station was established on the new Port Wakefield to Kadina railway.

The surveyed town which surrounded this station was on 4 March 1880 named after General Edward Hanson Paske, brother-in-law of the incumbent Governor, Sir William Jervois.

The railway yards at Paskeville were soon busily thronged by local farmers with transhipments of bagged wheat and barley, as well as wool.

The Paskeville Reservoir could hold 10,000,000 imperial gallons (45 megalitres) of water, which could then be distributed to the towns of Wallaroo, Kadina and Moonta, as well as down the Yorke Peninsula.

Since European settlement the scrub has mostly been cleared, with the exception of roadside remnants, leaving a dominant landscape of undulating grain fields.

The geology, which is dominated by limestone overlaid by ancient sand dunes, was quickly exhausted by pioneer cropping, but modern farming methods and fertilisers make this a highly productive food bowl.