William Penfold, one of the first settlers in the area, subdivided land he had bought in the Hundred of Munno Para in 1856 to create the township of Penfield.

The boundaries have changed over the years, the original township being overshadowed by the government acquisition of land immediately south of the early town centre since the 1940s for construction of military facilities such as the Penfield munitions factory.

William Friend Penfold was one of the first to buy land there, and in 1853 he opened the Plough and Harrow Hotel (which closed in 1893 and was destroyed by fire in 1899).

[5] A report in The Register on 10 November 1859, from a meeting in Peachey Belt, mentions a dinner given by James Philcox (a land speculator who named Evanston) at "Smidt's Hotel" before his departure from the colony in 1853.

However, the importance of the war overruled the landowners' objections, and the farming families were evicted from their land, leading to the destruction of the township of Penfield.

After the war, the munitions factory at Salisbury was repurposed as laboratories for the Woomera Range, originally known as the Long Range Weapons Establishment (LRWE),[12] initially Britain's vulnerability to attack by the new ballistic missile technology became apparent in the latter stages of World War II when German V2 rockets were launched from The Hague in Holland and directed on to London,[13] The (LRWE) initially transitioned into the Weapons Research Establishment (WRE), it eventually became the Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO).

[16] The western part is mostly an industrial area wrapped around the northern sides of RAAF Base Edinburgh and south of the Max Fatchen Expressway.