Traces of settlement on terrains of present days boundaries of Garwolin are more than 2000 years old.

During the Polish–Soviet War, the town was captured and briefly occupied by the invading Russians, before it was recaptured by the Poles led by Gen. Konarzewski on August 16, 1920.

The town and the powiat were administered by Kreishauptmann Karl Freudenthal, who was responsible for the murder of more than 1000 inhabitants, the deportation of several thousand local Poles to concentration camps and slave labor in Nazi Germany, and the transfer of the local Jews to various ghettos in the region.

Two Poles from Garwolin were also murdered by the Russians in the large Katyn massacre in 1940, and six died in Soviet Gulag camps between 1939 and 1947.

Garwolin railway station is located 5 km west from the center of town in the nearby village Wola Rębkowska, on rail route Warsaw-Lublin.