Marengo County was established by the Alabama Territorial Legislature in 1818, and the Town of Marengo was surveyed near the county center to serve as county seat. Lots were sold in 1824, and early French immigrants named the town Hohenlinden for Napoleon's victory in Bavaria in 1800, though everyday usage shortened it to Linden. A two-story log courthouse built in 1827 stood amid lodging houses, stores, homes, and churches, and when courts were in session the town became so rowdy that it earned the unofficial name Screamersville. During the 1840's Linden had 160 residents, a wooden jail, two small stores, and a barber shop. After the log courthouse burned in 1848, a brick federal-style courthouse was built on Cahaba Avenue, and a stagecoach regularly passed through town between Mobile and Huntsville. The Linden Jeffersonian began publication in 1853, and The Democrat Reporter has served the surrounding area since 1879. Incorporated on March 1, 1870, Linden remained the county seat except for a few months during Reconstruction. In 1890, citizens saw a gunfight in front of the courthouse between Deputy Sheriff Jeff "Dixie" Carter and train robber Rube Burrows. The Louisville and Nashville Railroad track, completed in 1902 nine-tenths of a mile south of old town, drew businesses toward a depot-area new town, while middle town grew near a Gothic-style courthouse built in 1903 at Main Street and Coats Avenue. That courthouse, with its chiming clock tower, was destroyed by fire and replaced in 1968 on the same site, and the area remained Linden's downtown business district into the twenty-first century. Linden continues as the county's center for government services, with an economy also based on local agriculture, timber, livestock, and recreational activities.