According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 9.1 square miles (23.5 km2), all land.

In April 1866, the settlement was the site of the Circleville Massacre, a lynching of 27 Southern Paiute men, women, and children by LDS settlers during the Black Hawk War.

In 2016, a monument was dedicated in the town park to remember the Native American people murdered during the massacre.

[10] A few settlers began to trickle back into the area in 1873 [11] and the town was re-established in 1874 when Charles Wakeman Dalton crossed the mountain from Beaver with two of his wives and family.

Notable outlaw Butch Cassidy (1866–1908) grew up in Circle Valley just a mile south of Circleville.

His family's small cabin, on the outskirts of town, is still standing on the land they homesteaded.

Siringo wrote, "a week was spent in the straggling village of Circleville, and I found out all about 'Butch's' early life and much about his late doings.

I had hard work to keep from falling in love with Miss Parker, the pretty young sister of 'Butch' Cassidy.

[14] Betenson's 1975 book Butch Cassidy, My Brother,[15] co-authored with Dora Flack, recounts her memory that Cassidy visited Circleville in 1924, adding to the controversy over whether he had died previously in South America.