Highlands Ranch, CO

9950 E Gateway Dr, Highlands Ranch, CO

Last updated 8/27/2026

Highlands Ranch is one of the largest master-planned communities in the United States, developed beginning in the late 1980s on a former cattle ranch south of Denver and built out in phases over subsequent decades to reach a population of well over 100,000 residents, despite remaining, unusually for a community of that size, an unincorporated area rather than its own independent city. The community was built around a network of distinct residential villages, each with its own recreation center, parks, and schools, a planning approach specifically designed to give a large-scale development a sense of smaller, more identifiable neighborhoods rather than one undifferentiated suburban sprawl. The Highlands Ranch Mansion, a Tudor Revival house built in the early 20th century as the centerpiece of the original cattle ranch, has been preserved as a historic site and event venue, giving the otherwise entirely modern, master-planned community a direct physical link back to the working ranch land it was built on top of. Highlands Ranch's combination of being one of the largest master-planned communities in the country, a village-based planning structure designed to create smaller neighborhood identities within a large development, and a preserved historic ranch mansion at its center has made it one of the more distinctive large-scale suburban developments anywhere in the Denver metro area.

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