Highlands Ranch, Colorado

Highlands Ranch is a census-designated place (CDP) in Douglas County, Colorado, United States. The population was 96,713 at the 2010 census. Located 12 miles south of Denver, Highlands Ranch is a suburb of the city and was the twelfth most populous CDP in the United States in 2010.

History

Beginnings

Like many parts of the Colorado Front Range, the first residents of Highlands Ranch were Native Americans. The area was populated by a number of nomadic tribes, including the Ute, Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes. Because it was part of the Mississippi River Drainage Area, Highlands Ranch was claimed for France by French explorer René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle and it was named as part of "Louisiana" in 1682. The Spanish gained Louisiana in 1763, and returned it to France in 1801. Highlands Ranch was in the Louisiana Purchase when it was sold to the United States in 1803.

The Stephen Harriman Long Expedition of 1820 entered the Highlands Ranch area at the beginning of July 1820. That was the first documented exploration of the Highlands Ranch area by European or United States explorers.

Highland

The term highland or uplands is used to denote any mountainous region or elevated mountainous plateau. Generally speaking, upland (or uplands) tends to refer to ranges of hills, typically up to 500-600 m. Highland (or highlands) is usually reserved for ranges of low mountains.

Highlands worldwide

Probably the most known highlands in the anglophone world are the Scottish Highlands in the United Kingdom, the mountainous region north and west of the Highland Boundary Fault. The Highland council area is a local government area in the Scottish Highlands and Britain's largest local government area.

Many countries have areas that are officially or unofficially referred to as highlands. Other than Scotland, these include parts Ethiopia, Kenya, Eritrea, Yemen, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, Syria, Cantabria and Nova Scotia (the latter being Latin for 'New Scotland' due to its resemblance to the country).

Synonymous terms used in other countries include high country, used in New Zealand, New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania and Southern Queensland in Australia, and parts of the United States (notably Western North Carolina), and highveld, used in South Africa.

Ranch

A ranch is a type of farm and an area of landscape, including various structures, given primarily to the practice of ranching, the practice of raising grazing livestock such as cattle or sheep for meat or wool. The word most often applies to livestock-raising operations in Mexico, the Western United States and Canada, though there are ranches in other areas. People who own or operate a ranch are called ranchers, cattlemen, or stockgrowers. Ranching is also a method used to raise less common livestock such as elk, American bison or even ostrich, emu, and alpacas.

Ranches generally consist of large areas, but may be of nearly any size. In the western United States, many ranches are a combination of privately owned land supplemented by grazing leases on land under the control of the federal Bureau of Land Management. If the ranch includes arable or irrigated land, the ranch may also engage in a limited amount of farming, raising crops for feeding the animals, such as hay and feed grains.

Colorado

Colorado (ⁱ/kɒləˈrædoʊ/, or /kɒləˈrɑːdoʊ/) (Spanish for "ruddy") is a state in the United States encompassing most of the Southern Rocky Mountains as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the Great Plains. Colorado is part of the Western United States, the Southwestern United States, and the Mountain States. Colorado is the 8th most extensive and the 22nd most populous of the 50 United States. The United States Census Bureau estimates that the population of Colorado was 5,456,574 on July 1, 2015, an increase of 8.50% since the 2010 United States Census.

The state was named for the Colorado River, which Spanish travelers named the Río Colorado for the ruddy (Spanish: colorado) silt the river carried from the mountains. The Territory of Colorado was organized on February 28, 1861, and on August 1, 1876, U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant signed Proclamation 230 admitting Colorado to the Union as the 38th state. Colorado is nicknamed the "Centennial State" because it became a state 28 days after the centennial of the United States Declaration of Independence.