It is located just south of Bulls and the Rangitīkei River, and west of the city of Palmerston North.

From 1885 until 1945, the Sanson Tramway provided a link with the national rail network, running south to meet the now-closed Foxton Branch in Himatangi.

[3] European settlement in the area began with the New Zealand Government's sale of the Sandon Block in the late 1860s.

[4] A photo in the National Library of New Zealand shows the settlement in the 1870s, with a few houses, a church and some other buildings on a single main road.

[5] Another photograph shows the church alongside a two-storied house, with a picket fence and a horse tied to a gate.

[6] The township of Sanson was the terminus of a tramway, with ran from a junction with the railway line at Hīmatangi from 1883 to 1945.

On one side of the tram line are wooden buildings; on the other is an unpaved street, a two-storey store, and a local hotel.

[10] Sanson School, having relocated in 1991 to what was the Manawatu County Council building (which upon moving premises, later to become the Manawatu District Council in Feilding) lies at the southern end of the township off State Highway 1.

[13] At the front of the old Sanson School building, located on State Highway 3 on the western boundary of the township (Dundas Road) is the Sanson Memorial Gate; erected to the memory of soldiers who died in World War I.