City of Linden, IOWA
#LINDEN, Iowa (#DALLAS County) FOUNDED: 1879 FOUNDERS: Elisha Evans and Matthew Burnham
NAMED FOR: Linden trees in the vicinity INCORPORATED: 1893 POST OFFICE: 1866-1871; 1882-Present
1900 CENSUS POPULATION: 314 2010 CENSUS POPULATION: 199 LOCATION: Section 19 of Linn Township
THE CREATION OF THE TOWN:
Maps as far back as 1870 show a Linden Post Office in Linn Township. These early post offices were kept mostly in homes and periodically moved about depending on who the postmaster was. The name Linden is traditionally thought to have originated with the trees along the Middle Raccoon River. When the initial post office was disbanded in 1871 however, the mail was moved to Adel. Over the next few years several post offices appeared in its place—Greenvale and Brough in 1873, and Harvey’s Mills and Linn in 1878. This was concurrent with growth in the township. When the Des Moines, Adel, and Western Railway came into the area, the name Linden reappeared as a train station. The land owned by Evans and Burnham was donated for the plat and the railroad helped facilitate the sales of lots. The station opened for passengers in 1879. James Lord built the first house in the new town and the first business was a store run by Lew Manor and Billy Smith. As the town grew and businesses coalesced, the rural post offices saw less use. Eventually, Greenvale, Brough, Harvey’s Mills, and Linn post offices were all discontinued and rolled to Linden. Churches in town included the Methodist Episcopal which moved from a country building into the community first. The Friends church, which was founded in 1882 first met in the township school until they too moved into town. There was also a Christian church organized a decade later. The school first met as Linn Township #5. Later it would move into a two-story building in town but the facility burned in 1892. After that, a brick school was built for $4,000. There was, for many years, an independent bank, chartered in 1890; and a newspaper “The Linden Guidon.”
FAST FACTS:
1) At one point early in the twentieth century there were three doctors in town: Dr. Payne, Dr. Mallory, and Dr. Cleveland.
2) Linden once had a baseball team called The Linden Merchants.
3) In 1980, for the town’s centennial, the US Postal Services granted the Linden Post Office the right to issue a commemorative cachet envelope. It pictured the firehouse and the cancellation read “Centennial Station - Linden, Iowa.”
4) In 2018, the Linden Public Library along with the Bagley Library made national news when volunteer Tammy Deal met author J. Courtney Sullivan at a book signing. During the conversation, Deal mentioned that the budgets were tight. Sullivan took to both social media and the publishing world to get free books sent to the Linden Library. More than 250 new books were sent to the Linden library, and within days donations came from the likes of Alec Baldwin and Iowa native Tom Arnold, who also included donations to Bagley.
TOWN MOTTO or SLOGAN: “Linden - Pride of Panther Country” TOWN FESTIVAL: Linden Daze
DON'T MISS: 1) The Linden Public Library. 2) The Linden Park at the Raccoon River Valley Trailhead. 3) Linden Post Office
