According to the United States Census Bureau, the village has a total area of 1.26 square miles (3.26 km2), all land.

49.0% of all households were made up of individuals, and 20% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older.

[8] The nearby Pere Marquette River is one of America's Blue Ribbon fisheries[9] and sportfishing is a major contributor to the local economy.

Located downtown Baldwin, the trout stands 25 feet tall.

The prison was originally built to house Michigan's youth offenders, but the state withdrew its charges from the facility.

[12] In June 2015, GEO Group contracted for two years with the state of Vermont to house 280 high-security inmates convicted of crimes in the state of Vermont in the North Lake Correctional Facility.

It was far from home; many had previously been housed in private prison facilities in Kentucky and Arizona.

[13] This contract was facilitated by the state legislature enacting a bill to support the private prison, specifically to authorize incarceration of high-security inmates at this facility.

Lake Country Republican Rep. Jon Bumstead had sponsored a bill in the Michigan Legislature to raise the security rating of the North Lake facility to Michigan's highest in order to accomplish this.

[14] The Michigan Senate voted 23–14 to remove the former restrictive provision, making it legal for the GEO Group to house out-of-state prisoners of all security classifications in Baldwin.

[12] As Lake County has high poverty and unemployment rates, legislators thought the expanded prison could provide some jobs to local residents.

County Commissioner Dan Sloan stated that as many as 150 jobs would result from the transfer of out-of-state prisoners to the facility.