The town is situated in a glacial trough between the Berlin Urstromtal in the southwest and the Oder Valley in the northeast, crossed by the Stobber River with its source in the Rotes Luch lowland.

In 1224 the Piast duke Henry I the Bearded granted large estates to the Cistercian monks of Lubiąż (Leubus) and Trzebnica (Trebnitz) Abbeys and had the lands settled with German-speaking colonists.

The House of Hohenzollern elector Frederick II of Brandenburg vested the farming citizens with market rights in 1465.

In the 17th century the estates were held by the Pfuel noble family and in 1688 were acquired by the Brandenburgian field marshal Heino Heinrich von Flemming, who had the Baroque Buckow Castle erected, which, rebuilt in a 19th-century Neoclassical style according to plans designed by Karl Friedrich Schinkel, was heavily damaged in World War II and demolished in 1948.

With the opening of the Prussian Eastern Railway station at neighbouring Müncheberg in 1865, followed by a direct narrow gauge railway connection to Buckow in 1897, the picturesque setting of the town made it become a popular destination for daytrippers from Berlin and several well-off families had summer cottages erected.