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Highland is a city in Madison County in Illinois' Metro East region, about 30 miles east of St. Louis.

Highland began as one of the oldest Swiss settlements in the United States, after Dr. Kasper Koepfli and his nephew Joseph Suppiger led the first party of 15 Swiss settlers to the area in 1831.

The town was laid out in 1837, and although the 50 Swiss families already living there wanted to call it Helvetia — Latin for Switzerland — politician James Semple talked them into the more American name 'Highland,' with the first lots auctioned on September 16, 1837.

At one point around the turn of the 20th century, Highland had the largest Swiss immigrant population of any community in the United States.

Highland keeps its Swiss ties alive as a sister city of Sursee, Switzerland.

Highland residents voted to drop the town's original name, Helvetia, in favor of Highland in the early 20th century, when the town also stopped publishing its German-language newspaper amid World War I-era hostility toward German heritage.

Highland is the birthplace of PET evaporated milk: Swiss immigrant John Baptist Meyenberg founded the Helvetia Milk Condensing Company there on February 14, 1885, the first company to commercially produce shelf-stable evaporated milk, and it was renamed the Pet Milk Company in 1923.

Highland farmer Louis Latzer, who ran the milk company from 1887 to 1924, is remembered as the 'Father of Pet Milk' for perfecting the condensing process.

On November 21, 1915, the Liberty Bell passed through Highland by train on its nationwide tour back to Pennsylvania from the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco.

Highland was counted at 9,991 people in the 2020 census, just under the 10,000 mark.