Word: glarus
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There is no mountain worthy of the name within hundreds of miles, but the townsfolk of New Glarus, Wis. (pop. 1,068) like to get out and yodel. They also blow ten-foot Alphorns made from fir logs, build houses with high roofs typical of the Swiss Alps, talk a Schweizer-deutsch patois, hang sweet-chiming Swiss bells around the necks of their innumerable brown Swiss cows, and produce vast quantities of Swiss cheese and Swiss lace...
Spare rooms were made ready, Swiss dishes cooked for thousands of American-Swiss visitors. For four days there were parades, fireworks, community singing and a great tooting of Alphorns. Climax of the celebration was a vast, open-air pageant in which some 120 townspeople took part. It dramatized New Glarus' 101-year history (the centennial was postponed because of the war), and told many a non-Swiss spectator a lot about Swiss tenacity, stubbornness and good humor...
Patois & Progress. The town had its beginning when the elders of Canton Glarus, Switzerland, decided their alpine valleys were too crowded, decreed that some of their people should found a colony in the U.S. The 27 selected families went to Wisconsin. They tried wheat farming, failed and turned to dairying. By 1861, when they sent their sons off to war, most people of New Glarus spoke English, were prosperous, voted in national elections. At this point the young folk should have started heading West, and New Glarus, having survived, should have forgotten all about Switzerland...
...Bulgarian but a Swiss am I, though born in Bulgaria. This as a word of caution to you in case you ever run into one of the thousands of Zwickys whose lives and deaths stand recorded in the church registers (Kirchenbücher) of Mollis, Canton of Glarus, Switzerland for over 600 years...