According to the United States Census Bureau, the CDP covers an area of 0.5 square miles (1.3 km2), all of it land.

William Knight built on a mound that marked the ancient meeting place of Native Americans inhabiting the regions about Cache Creek and the Sacramento River.

The site early demonstrated its importance as a steamboat landing and point of communication between the people east and west of the big central river.

In 1850, S. R. Smith kept a hotel in the settlement and in 1853, Charles F. Reed surveyed and laid out a townsite and was officially given the name of Knight's Landing.

That year, J. W. Snowball and J. J. Perkins opened a large general merchandise store on the Native American mound.

In 1860 D. N. Hershey and George Glascock erected a brick hotel, which took the place of the Yolo House, that inn being retired to the status of a private residence On March 25, 1890, the Knight's Landing branch of the Southern Pacific Railroad was completed and ready for business, and later the completion of the bridge across the river added immensely to the prosperity of the town.

[citation needed] The area is served by Woodland Joint Unified School District.

In 2010, the Science and Technology Academy of Knights Landing opened on the former Grafton Elementary campus as a charter school.

[citation needed] Knights Landing Cemetery (just south of town on County Road 102) is one of several purported final resting places of the stagecoach bandit Charles Bolles, a.k.a.