Colonial period and early 20th century in 1987 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. During the
colonial period, the foothills were on the periphery of
Thomas Peel's 1834 land grant, and during the 1840s European settlers took up small land holdings around the area at
Wungong and
Cardup. By the 1890s, the area was settled by a small number of large landowners, with names of early settlers included Lazenby, Mead, and Liddelow. Mead was an enterprising farmer with numerous landholdings in the foothills between the Serpentine River and the Wongong Brook, and at
East Rockingham. 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. A second major brickworks was set up at Beenup, north of Cardup, in 1913. This industry was a state government initiative aimed at reducing the cost of worker housing. 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. The State Brickworks at Byford closed down in 1964, due in part to its operations being eclipsed by a new brickworks in Armadale. The Cardup brickworks closed in 2012, but much of the infrastructure is still extant. 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. The new townsite, which is now the most established part of Byford, has a distinctive square plan in which are centred two concentric circles, long diagonal roads, and short perpendicular roads. Blythe gave the new settlement a hall. A new name for the township was chosen by residents in 1919 and gazetted the following year. Anglican and Presbyterian churches and a state school were among the first community buildings erected in Byford. The original 1906 township was located south-west of the intersection of Soldiers Road and Mead Street but it appears that little if any housing was built in that area until much later in the 20th century. However, the 1906 townsite included an allocation of land for recreation which is still used for that purpose today. Construction of the
South Western Railway reached the district in 1892. The railway was used to transport timber and, later in the 1910s, egg and milk from Byford to Perth. After a long period of disuse, this station was demolished around 1990. The current
Byford station is located just south of this. Since 2000, it has been served by
Transwa's twice daily
Australind service from
Perth to
Bunbury. Byford will become part of the
Transperth network when
Byford Line services commence in October 2025. In the 1920s the estate of a local land-owner, Samuel Bateman, was subdivided into smaller farms for the
Group Settlement Scheme. The Group Settlement Scheme also brought out 40 families to Byford to establish dairy farms, but majority of the families abandoned the land grants due to the area's poor soil and high water table. Other sites considered were
Cannington and Cardup. In December 1942, the Allied Works Council began storing explosives from
Britain. The depot was later expanded to provide for mines and gunnery equipment. Throughout
World War II, it supplied armaments to Allied navies except the
Americans, and when British submarines began operating in
Fremantle in 1944, it was the assembly point of submarine ammunition. At its peak it employed around 250 civilian workers, and by May 1948 it was 141. The depot was disclosed to the public at the end of the war. It costed
£250,000 to construct, and had a value of £1,000,000 by 1945. 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 was one of only two depots in Australia to be patrolled by the NDP, the other being
Newington, New South Wales. The NDP patrolled the Byford depot up to 1952, when it was transferred to
HMAS Leeuwin. The depot was known during the war as "R.A.N. 145", and then as "Naval Armament Depot, Fremantle" up to 1947 when it was renamed Naval Armament Depot, Byford.
As part of Serpentine-Jarrahdale In 1977, the local government responsibilities for Byford were transferred from the Shire of Armadale-Kelmscott (now the
City of Armadale) to the
Shire of Serpentine-Jarrahdale. Recently, 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), 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. A
Free Reformed Church was opened on the corner of Soldiers Road and Mead Street in 1987, and a private school was later built alongside this church. In the early 2010s, "The Glades" was developed in the town's west and it became the first real estate development in the state to receive certification in the three categories of the UDIA EnviroDevelopment program. The development went on to win three awards, including two national awards. The Glades derives its name from the area's wide green spaces. The estate's precincts of Coral Gardens is named after the abundance of
coral trees in it; William's Place is named after William Percival Nairn, who was a farmer in the Cardup-Beenup area and served in World War II; and Icaria after the Greek island of the
same name. In 2017, WBHO Infrastructure in
joint venture with
Phoenix Solar to construct the Byford Solar Farm. The farm will become the first utility scale solar farm to be located in a metropolitan area in Australia, and the largest solar farm within WA. Upon completion, it will generate around 80,000
MWh annually for the South-West integrated system. It is being developed by WestGen. Originally expected to be operational in 2018, WestGen received a two-year extension in 2022. The project is expected to cost $140 million. ==Cultural and natural sites==