The Lenni-Lenape, or “original people,” were the first inhabitants along the Schuylkill River, which they called Ganshowahanna, or “falling waters,” and in this area the peaceful Unamis, or Turtle, and Unalachtgo, or Turkey, tribes built walled river structures to trap shad and other fish while relying on abundant game such as turkey, deer, bear, and beaver. In 1663 the Dutch from New Amsterdam established a nearby trading post for pelts, and archaeological evidence suggests this area was used mainly by small foraging bands in temporary camps, with main villages at present-day Reading and along Tulpehocken Creek; the Lenni-Lenape were pushed westward by settlers and conquered by the Iroquois in 1742. The Swedes were the first European settlers along the Schuylkill, whose name, once spelled Skokihl and meaning “Hidden Creek,” was given by Dutch navigator Arendt Corssen in the mid-seventeenth century, after which Dutch control yielded to England following Britain’s 1664 victory and William Penn received Pennsylvania in 1681. This part of Penn’s Woods was an early frontier, with the Kittatinny Ridge, or Blue Mountains, 13 miles to the northwest marking the barrier between settlers and Indian Territory; Morlatton Village in Douglassville was the northernmost Swedish settlement, on land granted by Penn on October 21, 1701, and later English and German immigrants arrived, many of them from 1708 to 1752 becoming known collectively as the Pennsylvania Dutch, from “Deutsch.” Rich soil, limestone bedrock, and gentle slopes fostered a strong agricultural tradition with productive farms and orchards growing pears, paples, cherries, grapes, and prize-winning peaches, and farming remained the major local industry until suburbanization overtook the area in the 1980s, leaving only the Reed Farm active in 2001. With commerce centered in nearby Reading, manufacturing was limited until the iron industry began in 1836; local iron ore, limestone, and hardwood forests for charcoal supported ironmaking, nearby Clymer’s Furnace was converted to iron ore smelting, and the Temple Iron Company, organized in 1867, later merged with Clymer’s furnace to produce 40,000 tons of pig iron annually before closing in 1924. Berks County, named for England’s Berkshire, was created on March 11, 1752, and this area began as Alsace Township that same year before western residents, angered by taxes for hilly eastern roads, formed Muhlenberg Township in 1849, probably named for Henry Augustus Muhlenberg I, a U.S. Congressman from Reading, ambassador to Austria, and two-time gubernatorial candidate. The township was also home to artist and naturalist Christopher High Shearer, who after beginning as a fruit farmer and opening a Reading studio at age 21 returned in 1883 to live near Stoudt’s Ferry Bridge, and to William H. Luden, born in 1859, who became known for mentholated cough drops and owned properties along River Road. The river long shaped life through both resources and destruction: from 1818 to 2006 there were 22 recorded floods, caused by extraordinary rainfall or by frozen ground and ice-dam failures, and the Great Flood of September 2, 1850, the second major flood of that year, rose 25 feet and washed away two dams and every bridge between Pottsville and Royersford.