Highland and Cedar Hills look like they were built yesterday, and most of the houses were. But the bench they sit on has a history older than the subdivisions, and it is different from every older town around them. Nobody was sent to settle it. Farmers came on their own, on homestead claims far larger than anything in the fort towns below, and spent the next fifty years fighting their neighbors for water. Then, for a few decades in the middle of the twentieth century, the part of the bench that became Cedar Hills was best known for turkeys.
Both places incorporated in 1977. Here is what came before.
A delta, a bench and a name nobody can quite explain
The ground is a delta. Highland's historical society, in essays compiled by its historian Charles T. Greenland II, explains that the bench was built by streams from Alpine and American Fork canyons dropping their load into Lake Bonneville near the end of the last ice age, after the lake had fallen to about 4,800 feet. Cedar Hills' own city history describes the same bench as an alluvial fan on the old lakeshore.
Early writers called it "the upper bench," "the bench" or "the Lehi bench." The lowlands were the farms of American Fork and Lehi nearer Utah Lake. "Highland" was in use before anybody lived there in numbers; the area got a voting district in 1893 and appears in the 1900 census as Highland Precinct. The usual story is that Scottish homesteaders, Alexander Adamson in particular, along with George Cunningham and Peter Smith, named it for the Scottish Highlands. Greenland notes, with some dryness, that Highland natives who have visited Scotland found little resemblance.
Before homesteading, the north end of the valley was Ute hunting ground, as the National Register nomination for Alpine's Moyle House records. For the Timpanogos and Ute history of the valley, read the Timpanogos people of Utah Valley.
Homesteaders, not colonists
Most of the older Utah County towns began with a company of families sent by church leaders, a fort and a surveyed grid of small lots. Highland began with paperwork.
Homestead filings on the bench began in 1869, under the federal homestead law. Greenland counts 35 patents perfected by 1889 and eight more in the following fifteen years, and notes that many homesteaders spent only the minimum time required on their land. The first homes came slowly: James Pullen built in June 1870, Hannah Briggs in April 1871. John Poole is often credited as the first settler, but he moved into his home in May 1873. His homesite, near 5860 West 10620 North, holds a small cemetery with the graves of five of his children.
Greenland calls it a free-lance settlement. Farmsteads averaged 131 acres, while about 60 percent of the lots in Lehi, American Fork and Alpine were 10 acres or less. He also passes along the local suggestion that some settlers chose the bench to stay out of reach of mission calls from church leaders, and is careful to present that as a suggestion. The 1880 census counted 88 people, recorded under American Fork and Alpine, mostly English-born farmers. Only six of the seventeen heads of household were still there in 1900. By then Highland Precinct had 195 residents in 32 households, and 29 of the 32 men who headed them were farmers.
One of the families gives a sense of the life. Stephen Moyle, who crossed the plains in a handcart company in 1856 and whose family moved to Alpine in 1858, spent about twelve years driving cattle in the Northwest before coming home. In the spring of 1874 he and his wife Mary Ann built near Dry Creek on 160 acres, cleared 17 acres for wheat, corn and potatoes, and that May began digging Highland's first irrigation ditches with family and friends. Tax records for 1878, the historical society says, show him as the wealthiest man in Highland.
Disease hit the scattered farms hard. Diphtheria killed three of John Poole's children in 1879. In May 1894 it killed George Myers' wife and three children, and a fourth child later that month, and that fall it took two of Jacob Beck's daughters and children in other families.
The water fight
Highland's central problem was that its water already belonged to someone else.
In February 1852, according to a history by Cora Beck Adamson on the city's website, the territorial legislature granted Lehi one-third of the water of American Fork Canyon, and in the spring of 1853 Lehi dug a ditch across the bench to carry it home. When the homesteaders arrived, the ditch ran past their farms. In the 1870s John Poole took water from it to save his crops, and Lehi took him to court in Provo; Adamson's history names George Sutherland as the lawyer in the case. Stephen Moyle fought Lehi's claims too, hard enough that he was excommunicated from the church for a time, before being reinstated. The historical society records that he predicted the bench would one day be a very desirable place to live.
Relief came in stages. Around 1900 work began on a reservoir at Silver Lake under George Myers. In 1913 Highland farmers bought shares of what the history calls Murdock water from the Provo Reservoir Company, at $80 a share. In 1930 Highland men helped promote the Deer Creek Reservoir and subscribed for 5,000 acre-feet. Adamson's history calls 1913 the turning point. The paved Murdock Canal Trail that crosses both cities today carries the same name.
Farmers supplemented their income where they could. Many hauled ore down from the mines of American Fork Canyon, and the bed of the narrow-gauge railroad built to those mines can still be traced along East Creek. Our history of American Fork tells the story of that short-lived line.
A school before a church
Utah towns usually built a meetinghouse first. Highland built a school. In 1888 a schoolhouse went up on John Hegan's land at what is now the southeast corner of 6000 West and 10400 North, and it became the place for church and community gatherings as well as classes. A school district was organized in 1893. Greenland writes that much of the 1888 building is now part of the church on that site.
Growth stayed slow for decades: 280 people in 1930 and 310 in 1940, by the historical society's counts. The crops widened to include peas, beans, potatoes, berries and orchards, and family histories on the city's site describe Highland farmers working at Geneva Steel while keeping their farms going. A chapter of the society's history is devoted to "peaviners," the machines that separated peas from their vines and pods.
The turkey ranch that became Cedar Hills
The slope at the southeast edge of the bench, toward the mouth of American Fork Canyon, was harder to farm. Utah's History To Go says early settlers named it for its cedar trees, the junipers that grow on the slopes, and that farming there was attempted and mostly failed. Cedar Hills' city history adds that early settlers called the area "The Bench."
What finally put it on the map, as History To Go puts it, was a turkey farm. During the Great Depression, Azra Adams and his wife, Effie Warnick Adams, built a turkey ranch on the slope. In 1956, as president of the National Turkey Federation, Azra Adams presented Thanksgiving turkeys to President Dwight Eisenhower, Vice President Richard Nixon and Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson.
The suburbs ended it. As neighbors moved in nearby during the 1960s, complaints about noise and dust grew, while costs rose and profits fell. The ranch was sold, and Cedar Hills was built on the land.
Two cities in 1977
Highland incorporated as a city on July 13, 1977, covering about 2,142 acres. Cedar Hills incorporated the same year with just 31 households, according to History To Go, and its own city history says it "was established as a community in 1977."
The early governments were small and improvised. History To Go records that Cedar Hills officials first rejected proposals for a town hall and fire stations, set up an animal control system and then ended it right away, and argued over burning rules and where children could sled.
Then the bench filled in. Cedar Hills grew 174 percent between 1990 and 1997, to 1,340 people, by History To Go's figures, and passed 9,000 by 2006. The census, which still listed Cedar Hills as a town in 2000, counted 3,094 residents that year, 9,796 in 2010 and 10,019 in 2020. Growth has slowed since, and History To Go calls it one of the most densely populated towns in the county. Highland went from 8,172 people in 2000 to 15,523 in 2010 and 19,348 in 2020, and its boundaries more than doubled, to about 5,500 acres by 2016. The large lots of the homestead era carried over into the zoning, which our living in Highland guide explains, and Cedar Hills' compact layout reflects a city built on one ranch in a short window, as living in Cedar Hills describes.
Stephen Moyle's prediction came true.
See it today
Neither city has a museum or a historic district, so the history here is mostly in the landscape.
The 1888 school site, southeast corner of 6000 West and 10400 North, Highland. Much of the first schoolhouse survives inside the church building on the corner.
The Murdock Canal Trail, which crosses both cities and carries the name of the water that ended the bench's shortage. Our Murdock Canal Trail guide has trailheads.
The old railroad grade in American Fork Canyon, along East Creek, where Highland farmers once hauled ore.
The Highland Historical Society's history pages, on the Highland City website, with essays, family histories, census lists and a 1958 map of every farm on the bench. They are the best place to go deeper.
The festivals. Highland's Highland Fling and the Cedar Hills Family Festival are the cities' summer celebrations.
For how the three bench cities compare today, see our Highland, Alpine and Cedar Hills neighborhoods guide. The older town above them is covered in a short history of Alpine, and the town that fought them for water in a short history of Lehi.
Frequently Asked Questions
When was Highland settled?
How did Highland get its name?
Why is Highland different from older Utah County towns?
When did Highland become a city?
What was the water fight between Highland and Lehi?
What was on the land before Cedar Hills?
When was Cedar Hills incorporated?
Are there historic sites to visit in Highland or Cedar Hills?
Sources
The facts in this guide were checked against these sources. Hours, fees and rules change, so confirm anything time-sensitive with the source before you go. How we make Provo.com.
- Highland History (Charles T. Greenland II, Highland Historical Society), Highland City. Checked October 20, 2026.
- Earliest Highland (Charles T. Greenland), Highland City. Checked October 20, 2026.
- History of Highland (Cora Beck Adamson): water, mining, early families, Highland City. Checked October 20, 2026.
- Censuses and history resources (incorporation date), Highland City. Checked October 20, 2026.
- Stephen and Mary Ann Kelly Moyle, Highland City. Checked October 20, 2026.
- LeRoy and Leah Wagstaff (farm crops, Geneva work), Highland City. Checked October 20, 2026.
- Highland History Scavenger Hunt answer key (peaviners), Highland City. Checked October 20, 2026.
- Utah Division of State History, History To Go: Cedar Hills, Utah Division of State History, History To Go. Checked October 20, 2026.
- City of Cedar Hills: City History, City of Cedar Hills. Checked October 20, 2026.
- Moyle House and Indian Tower, National Register nomination (Ute hunting ground), National Park Service. Checked October 20, 2026.
- 2020, 2010 and 2000 Decennial Census redistricting data (P1), U.S. Census Bureau via USAFacts connector. Checked October 20, 2026.
