Linden, AL

Linden is Marengo County’s seat, a central Alabama town whose name has changed alongside its courthouse story. The county was created in 1818, the settlement was surveyed as the Town of Marengo, and French settlers shortened Hohenlinden to Linden. For a while, court days gave the place the rough nickname “Screamersville.” The Old Marengo County Courthouse, built in 1850 after an earlier log courthouse burned, still gives downtown its strongest historical marker. US 43 runs through town, north toward Demopolis and south toward Thomasville.

The county-seat role keeps courthouse business, schools, stores, and local roads in the same daily frame. Linden City Schools runs a citywide public system, while Marengo Academy opened in 1969 as one of the private schools created across the South after public-school desegregation; that history remains part of Linden’s school landscape. The Tombigbee River forms Marengo County’s western edge, and its water-and-forest corridor shaped the county’s agriculture, timber, and transport. Linden’s local read is a courthouse town set inland from a major river, with a strange nickname and a long county-seat memory.