The hinterlands of Montgomery County occupy the core of the plateau between the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. Northwest Montgomery County is a checkerboard of township names, some German (Hanover, Frederick), some Welsh (Gwynned, North Wales), and others English (Worcester, Hatfield, Telford). North of PA 363, the county still conveys something of the isolated villages and rural character that Wallace Nutting would have seen when he recorded the state for his Pennsylvania Beautiful (eastern) (1924). This remarkable mix of eighteenth-, nineteenth-, and twentieth-century life is evidenced in the villages of Palm, Pennsburg, and East Greenville that are lined up along PA 29. The villages are typical main street agglomerations with churches and houses interspersed along one of the routes to the German center at Reading. The region is particularly notable for a cluster of early German landmarks centered on the New Hanover Lutheran Church ( MO29), the Henry Antes House ( MO30), and the restored but extraordinary St. Augustus Lutheran Church ( MO32). These are interspersed with German Reformed, Lutheran, Mennonite, and Schwenkfelder congregations in a landscape dominated by the great stone-ended German barns and farmhouses. It is a cultural district that is fast disappearing and worth seeing.
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