For today’s blog post, we return once again to that upper corner of Berks County known locally as the Eck, pressed against the Blue Mountain ridge of the Appalachians. Rising above the farmland is one of the region’s most recognizable summits called the Pinnacle, or Zinnekopp in Pennsylvania Dutch.

Language learners love talking about “untranslatable” words — the ones that supposedly resist being neatly carried over into another language. Usually, what people mean is simpler: there’s no single word equivalent.

Young Jacob Gerhard found a secluded spot halfway up a mountain to build a small log cabin.

Jerusalem Eastern Salisbury’s church records, kept in immaculate German script, suddenly end in 1791.

In the years after the Revolutionary War, fear gripped tightly around the small Salzbarrick (Salisbury) area nestled on the slope of Lehigh Mountain.