Highland Town History

It was known simply as the Highlands from the 1850s when the Johnstons acquired 53 acres of swampy land until the town was incorporated April 4, 1910 simply because it had a sandy ridge that rose above the marsh.

Nearly 20 years before Highland was incorporated, the rustic and sparsely populated area became an expansion site for kraut processing for the Libby, McNeil & Libby Company. By 1890, the town’s largest industry was a canner of processed cabbage grown by local Dutch farmers.

Nature’s bounty would become Highland’s legacy. Crops, like cabbage,onions, other root vegetables, as well as summer delights like tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers, would help feed residents living in the bustling industrial cities to the north.

The abundant harvests of vegetables that flourished in the sandy soil along Ridge Road helped keep the cannery thriving with foods processed there, packaged onto rail cars and shipped to Chicago and points east.

The Johnstons and the Libby venture are footnotes in Highland history as are the legacies left by the Clough, Lynch, Kooy,Van Til and Lamprecht families.

Combined, the footnotes help complete an evolving picture of Highland, more than 100 years of history kept vibrant and alive by residents like Sue Douthett and the members of the Highland Historical Society. 

They house mementoes that have been amassed in a large classroom at Lincoln Center that has been converted into the Town Museum. Douthett keeps details about the founding families, industries, even topography that catalogs the town’s past. As curator of the museum, Douthett preserves the treasures that have been donated from attics and basements throughout town.

She is always looking to share what she has learned, helping to pave a historical trail using markers from the past.

“THis is a history worth preserving,” she says. “Highland is so interesting because so many of the families who helped build the town in its early days have descendants who have remained in town to this day.”