Geneva, Alabama, was established in the 1820s at the junction of the Choctawhatchee and Talakahatchee (Pea) Rivers. Henry A. Yonge, who established an Indian trading post there, named the settlement for his bride, a native of Geneva, New York. Initially part of Dale County, it later became part of Coffee County. Old town Geneva was closely tied to the Choctawhatchee River, which flows southward to Choctawhatchee Bay. Early river navigation used log barges poled up and down the river, and steamboats were soon being built in Geneva; by 1845, one of these, the Brooklyn, was on the river. When the Civil War began, steamboats were regularly traveling southward, and river transportation reached its peak in the 1880s and 1890s, when thousands of bales of cotton were taken to Caryville, Florida, to the railroads. The arrival of railroads in Geneva County in the early 1900s ended the era of river transportation. In the spring of 1865, the Lincoln flood destroyed most of the old town, and the town was moved to higher ground, with the new town built on the south end of Commerce Street. After a fire in 1888 destroyed most of those buildings, new construction began north of this site. The city of Geneva was incorporated in 1871. In December 1868, Geneva County was created from part of Coffee County, with Geneva named as the county seat. A log cabin located on the new edition of the city cemetery served as the first courthouse, and later the county offices were moved to a brick building on this site. A new courthouse was built there in 1899, burned in 1911, and was replaced a year later by a second courthouse that remained in use until it was torn down in 1965. The Geneva City Hall now on the site was built in 1968.