Highland Historic District

Citrus town at the foot of the San Bernardinos

Highland Historic District occupies the historic core of Highland, California, at the east end of the San Bernardino Valley, just below where the San Bernardino National Forest begins. Listed in 2001 (ref. 01000333), the district covers about 29 acres. Period of significance is 1891–1938. Areas: agriculture, transportation, settlement, and architecture.

Surveyors laid out the townsite in 1891; the plat was filed two years later, first south of Pacific Street. What the nomination documents is a citrus-belt commercial and residential package: Main Street commercial blocks, packing houses beside the abandoned Santa Fe rail corridor, worker cottages and tenant housing, and civic buildings. Styles run Queen Anne, Craftsman/bungalow, Mission and Spanish Colonial Revival, plus industrial packing-house forms.

What the inventory still points to

Among the contributors named in the nomination are the First Bank of Highland (1904, later absorbed by Bank of America); the Methodist-Episcopal congregation’s church; the 1926 Spanish Colonial building that housed both the Woman’s Club and the public library; and packing houses of the Highland Orange Association, Highland Fruit Growers, American Fruit Growers (1927 sawtooth industrial roof on packing-house row), and Highland Citrus Association. Worker hotels and vernacular cottages fill in the residential grain. A Pacific Electric connection to San Bernardino (line acquired 1911) put a trolley depot into the transportation story; packing-house fires and rebuilds mark the industrial timeline.

This is the landscape of Southern California’s orange economy made small-town: rail, packing, bank, church, club, and the houses of growers and laborers within walking distance of the boxes.

Visiting

Highland is an incorporated city and a living community. The historic district is public streets through private and commercial property. Park legally; do not enter packing houses or residences. Some civic buildings may have changed use since the 2001 inventory (the nomination already notes post-period alterations on individual parcels). There is no federal visitor center and no entry fee for walking the streets.

The nomination does not publish modern business hours or claim that every packing house is open. What you can rely on is the street pattern and the surviving commercial/industrial shells along the old rail corridor. Summer heat in the inland valley is severe; winter is mild. Mountains rise immediately north — the same geography that supplied water and defined the citrus belt’s edge.