Baldwinsville (the village itself) is located in the towns of Lysander and Van Buren, astride the Seneca River.

The village is named after Dr. Jonas Baldwin,[2] who built a dam across the Seneca River to generate energy and a private canal to keep the integrity of the water highway.

Baldwinsville initially grew as a local center for a prosperous farming area, with numerous mills along the north and south shores of the Seneca River.

In the early 1900s the village was also served by the Erie Lackawanna Railway, connecting Baldwinsville to the cities of Syracuse and Oswego.

In addition to agriculture, Baldwinsville had small factories, such as Morris Machine Works, Jardine Bronze Foundry, and others.

A large brewery now owned by Anheuser-Busch was constructed immediately east of the village in the mid-1970s to take advantage of ample water supplies from Lake Ontario.

Dozens of local farm boys are listed on the Civil War monument in the village cemetery along the Seneca River, having served and died in several units of the Union Army.

The Board of trustees includes Mayor Bruce Stebbins, Ruth Cico, Megan O'Donnell, Mike Shepard, Nathan Collins, Eric Reinagel, and Donna Freyleue.

The Rotary Club organizes the Seneca River Days festival (formerly the John McHarrie Day festival) occurs in June; it features an anything that floats race, which encourages entrants to build a floating vehicle without spending more than a set amount (currently $50).

It lies in a transitional zone between the nearly flat plain immediately adjacent to Lake Ontario, and the hills to the south that form the approaches to the Allegheny Mountains of southern New York and northern Pennsylvania.

This rolling glacial terrain is intersected and divided by forests, meadows, farmland, and bodies of water of all types, which is marked by significant seasonal variations.

Local soils are a rich and varied blend, with deposits of gravels, sands, and rock flour, ground up and tilled by the glaciers, and left behind as they receded to the north.

As is typical of the Great Lakes plains, these varied soils and gentle slopes create ideal conditions for specialty agriculture, orchards, and vegetable farming.

Local forests, while predominantly hardwoods such as Sugar Maple, are also widely variable due to the variations in soil, drainage, and microclimate.