The Highlands neighborhood is located directly northwest of Denver city center on the west side of Interstate 25. The Highlands neighborhood is sometimes confused as Highlands Ranch, which Denver real estate experts say is only a coincidence they share the same name. It is important to understand the distinction when shopping for Denver real estate and cruising through Denver neighborhoods. The Highland neighborhood in its earlier history was fairly homogeneous. It consisted primarily of residents who chose to have their Denver homes located outside of the city as it was more insular and indicative of their own social ways. These citizens tended to be all white, protestant and Republican. There was a large constituency of Mason members and many social clubs were formed as sort of ancillary to other Denver neighborhoods and their own clubs and organizations.
Because of its location outside of the city of Denver, Highlands remained suburban and somewhat isolated from Denver and Denver neighborhoods. These Denver homes remained neat little sturdy dwellings set along Highland's quaint and curvy streets with distinctly Scottish names. When settlers carved out this piece of Denver real estate, the developer had a plan of branding it as something different from other Denver neighborhoods. The idea was to have a kind of Scottish enclave within Denver despite its mixture of Italian and other European descendants. The truth was that the Scottish feel was a bit of a ruse just to get the branding idea across.
Eventually, as happened throughout history to all suburban areas, Highlands began a growth spurt and like the surrounding Denver neighborhoods became closer to downtown Denver thanks to the advent of the Denver Tramway Corporation which established routes from these Denver homes to the center of town. Soon business centers began to open in and around the tramway stops in Highland and the surrounding Denver real estate landscape began to change as did the population mix. Highlands was now more accessible to more people who could stake a claim to their Denver homes.
That accessibility continued to grow right up through the 1990's and the beginning of the new century, and now Highlands has ultimate access to downtown Denver with the building of the Millennium Bridge and Platte River Bridge. Indeed, this bit of Denver real estate has become quite the commodity and has entered the list of desirable Denver neighborhoods. This boon has begun a litany of new development to augment the available old one family Denver homes and make space for the population increase. New high end condominiums and lofts are taking the place of old structures and parking lots.
