Nanuet is 19 miles north of Manhattan, and 2 miles north of the New Jersey border. It has one of three Rockland County stations on New Jersey Transit's Pascack Valley Line.

According to the New York Times, the hamlet was first named Nannawitt's Meadow after Nannawitt, a migratory Kakiat Indian who settled in the area now occupied by the Nanuet Mall at the intersection of Middletown Road and Route 59. After several name changes the hamlet became known as Nanuet in 1856.

Also according to the Times, the Erie Railroad arrived in Rockland County in 1841 along its original main line to Piermont. The New Jersey and New York Railroad, the predecessor of the Pascack Valley Line, reached Nanuet in 1869.

Maxwell Anderson drew attention to the hamlet in "High Tor," a play based on the robbery that took place at the Nanuet Bank in 1936. The advent of the Tappan Zee Bridge in 1955 brought changes to the area that are still continuing.

The community is located in the Town of Clarkstown. Nanuet has popular shops and its main shopping center, the Nanuet Mall, lies on Route 59, the main thoroughfare, although the mall has gradually been abandoned and left vacant over the years due to a shift in popularity to the nearby Palisades Center in West Nyack.

Popular recreational activities include gold panning along the Naurashaun Brook south of Townline Road, exploring the Paleolithic ruins west of the Hackensack River, and fossil and Indian arrowhead collecting west of Sickletown Road.