[2] It is located 30 miles (48 km) north-northeast of Bakersfield,[3] at an elevation of 3,081 feet (939 m) in the Greenhorn Mountains foothills, a range of the Sierra Nevada.

Summers are hot during the day, with 51.5 afternoons during an average year topping 90 °F or 32.2 °C, but mornings remains pleasantly cool and dry.

[7] Glennville became the last stop on the stagecoach line from Visalia and the trading center for the surrounding valley after the decline of Lavers' Crossing.

[3] In 1860, a state-funded wagon road from Glennville to Kernville was laid out by Thomas Baker, a civil engineer and founder of Bakersfield.

The Glennville adobe, built before the Civil War, still stands along Route 155 next to the fire station and is the oldest building in Kern County.