The town is believed to be named after Beverley in Yorkshire, from where some of the earliest explorers of the Avon valley originated, including Colonial Surgeon Charles Simmons, an early landowner in the district.
While settlers arrived from the 1860s onwards, and a town was established in 1868, it wasn't until the arrival of the Great Southern Railway in 1886 that the town started to grow, and with the completion of the railway in 1889 to Albany, Beverley became an important centre.