The village lies in the southern Middletown Valley along the eastern base of South Mountain.

Burkittsville was also made a subject of national attention when it was used as the setting of the 1999 horror film The Blair Witch Project.

The first land tract to be patented within the present boundaries of Burkittsville was "Dawson's Purchase", dated May 14, 1741.

[4] The Harley/Arnold Farm, located on the western border of the village at the base of South Mountain, stands on the "Dawson's Purchase" tract.

Burkittsville was first founded by two property owners: Major Joshua Harley and Henry Burkitt.

Over the next thirty years it grew as a community with stores, shops, blacksmiths, a schoolhouse, and a tannery.

Routinely characterized as the trigger to Antietam, victory at Crampton's Gap embodied Union Gen. George B. McClellan's strategic reaction to his acquiring the legendary “Lost Order” at Frederick which disclosed Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee's campaign movements.

After seizing Crampton's Gap Gen. William B. Franklin failed to relieve the besieged Union garrison at Harpers Ferry, and more importantly to prevent Confederate generals James Longstreet and “Stonewall” Jackson from reuniting at Sharpsburg.

There Lee hastily stood his ground in the mammoth battle of Antietam, the war's bloodiest day.

President Abraham Lincoln then used the marginal Union victory at Antietam as a springboard to his Emancipation Proclamation which changed war aims.

[5] The Burkittsville Historic District is itself part of the larger Crampton's Gap Historic District, which comprises the southern portion of the lands involved in the Battle of South Mountain, extending from the western side of Crampton's Gap, over South Mountain and about a mile to the east of Burkittsville.

According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 0.45 square miles (1.17 km2), all land.