The village of Highlands was founded in 1875 by two developers living in Kansas who, according to legend, took a map in hand and drew a line from New York to New Orleans. Then they passed another line between Chicago and Savannah. These lines, they predicted, would be the great trade routes of the future, and where they crossed would someday be a great population center.
What evolved was a health and summer resort at more than 4,000 feet on the highest crest of the western North Carolina plateau in the Southern Appalachian Mountains. This paradisiac settlement, the highest incorporated town east of the Rockies, provided common ground for both Northern and Southern pioneers a decade after their great Civil War. By 1883 nearly 300 immigrants from the Eastern states were calling Highlands home.
