Welcome to the place I have called home for 18 years of my life. Highlands Ranch is in my humble opinion, one of the best places to grow up because of how accessible it made everything. According to my mother, it is also the perfect place to raise a family with its cookie cutter houses regulated by HOAs, schools in every neighborhood, and even neighborhoods get-togethers. It is in the perfect location; thirty minutes south of Denver, access to the city is as easy as hoping on the highway, and with the closest mountain towns only a hour away, hiking and skiing is a common weekend escape. Living in Highlands Ranch allowed me to experience everything that my state offers because everything was so close. Like many of the suburbs in Colorado, Highlands Ranch is relatively new, only having been developed in the last 20-30 years. This means that my town really doesn’t have any history; we don’t even have a cemetery.
Image 1: Denver Post
Like I said before, my mother loves Highlands Ranch because of how family oriented it is, but that’s also why my friends and I affectionately refer to Highlands Ranch “The Bubble.” We consider it a bubble because every kid who grows up there is insanely sheltered. As a primarily white, upper middle class community, it is rare to see things like poverty, differing political ideals, and sadly diversity. We go to school with the same kids from preK to twelfth grade, who have similar backgrounds and cultures which limits our severely impacts our view of the world. For some, traveling outside of our community to places like Denver and Colfax comes as a shock, it feels almost as though you are going into another world.
Image 2: The Denver Channel
Despite how sheltered Highlands Ranch is, those of us who grow up there are still incredibly similar to everyone else in Colorado. We use the mountains as a navigation tool (it’s away from or towards the mountains, not east or west), don’t pronounce the “t” sound in words (it’s the mounians, not mountains), and love to be outside. Now, if you were to ever visit Colorado, I would not recommend coming to my hometown. While it’s a great place to grow up, it is the complete opposite of a tourist attraction. The real beauty of Colorado comes from everything that surrounds my hometown, from the well known town and the hidden gems, all of which you’ll have to stick around to learn about.
February 14, 2020 at 6:41 pm
This was a very interesting post to read, because I grew up in a similar sort of situation in a suburban town up in New Hampshire. We were close to the White Mountains, which were about an hour drive north, and also close to the city, with Boston about thirty minutes south. I wouldn’t recommend people visit my hometown if they come to NH, because there are much more interesting things to do around it, but I really loved my hometown and enjoyed having access to so many different things–city, mountains, and ocean. That being said, similar to what you mentioned, my upbringing definitely was a bit sheltered because of where I grew up.