The southern Yorke Peninsula town of Edithburgh, named after Lady Edith, the wife of the then Governor of South Australia Sir James Fergusson, was proclaimed in June 1869. The town's two main streets were named Edith and Blanche after the couple's daughters.
In the early 1900s the town reached a size of just over 1000 people and was one of South Australia's busiest ports, loading such items as barley, wheat, gypsum and salt collected from salt lakes in the district.
The town, with a current population near 450, is now a popular holiday destination for fishing, boating and diving and is also a base for a flotilla of the South Australian Sea Rescue Squadron.