Crime Scene and Trauma Cleanup in Highland, KS

Highland is a small city in Doniphan County in the northeastern corner of Kansas, a few miles from the Nebraska border, and it is home to Highland Community College.

Highland's roots go back to 1837, when Presbyterian missionaries Samuel Irvin and William Hamilton founded the Iowa and Sac & Fox Mission east of the present town, a site now preserved as a state historic site.

The town itself was laid out in 1857 and named after Highland, Illinois, and its founders deliberately planned it as an educational town, reserving four blocks on the west side for a future university.

Highland Community College began as Highland University, chartered on February 9, 1858, with its first building, Irvin Hall, built that same year; it is recognized as the first and oldest institution of higher education in Kansas and has changed its name eight times over its history.

The college is a member of the Kansas Jayhawk Community College Conference, and its recent enrollment of about 2,190 students is more than double the population of the town itself.

As of the 2020 census, Highland had 903 residents living in only 251 households, a figure shaped by college housing, and 341 housing units in total.

Thanks to its student population, Highland is one of the youngest towns in Kansas, with a median age of just 24.9 years in the 2020 census and more than a third of residents between 18 and 24.

Highland covers only about 0.53 square miles, making it one of the more densely settled small towns in northeast Kansas at roughly 1,720 people per square mile.

In 2011 Highland proclaimed itself the 'Snowflake City of Kansas,' a title it still promotes.

Local students are served by Doniphan West USD 111, and Doniphan West Junior/Senior High School has been located in Highland since 2009; the former Highland High School Blue Streaks won state Class 1A boys' track and field titles in 1969 and 1990 before the school closed in unification.