Car insurance in Highland, Indiana is cheaper than most of its drivers probably assume, and the town itself started out as a name nobody expected either. In 1883, surveyors laying Chicago & Atlantic Railroad track through what was mostly swamp hit a low ridge of dry sand and started calling it “the Highlands.” Landowner John Clough platted a town around that ridge the same year, and the name stuck even after the “s” quietly dropped off.

Indiana minimums apply in Highland: 25/50/25 — $25,000 bodily injury per person, $50,000 per accident, $25,000 property damage. At-fault state. Highland full-coverage quotes generally run below the $1,856/yr statewide average.

A Sand Ridge, a Kraut Factory, and the Dutch Farmers Who Built It

Michael and Judith Johnston had already been farming the area since 1847, well before the railroad gave it a name. What actually grew the place was a wave of Dutch tenant farmers who moved over from nearby Munster, drawn by cheap, workable land on that same sand ridge. They planted cabbage, and the cabbage fed Highland's first real industry: a kraut factory that turned the town's biggest crop into its biggest export.

Highland incorporated in 1910 with just 304 residents. It stayed that small for decades, then nearly doubled in the 1940s and exploded in the 1950s as Chicago-area manufacturing jobs pulled families across the state line — the kind of growth curve a lot of Lake County towns share, but one that started here from a cabbage patch, not a factory gate.

Wicker Park and the Town Highland Became

Wicker Memorial Park, straddling the Highland-Griffith line, got its start in 1927 when pastureland was converted into a memorial for the town's World War I soldiers — President Calvin Coolidge led the dedication in person. The WPA later rebuilt large parts of it during the Depression, and today it's still the kind of green space, with its small lake and golf course, that a landlocked sand-ridge town wouldn't obviously have without that history.

Highland now sits at around 23,500 to 24,000 residents, wedged between Munster and Hammond along Ridge Road and US-41 (Indianapolis Boulevard), close enough to Chicago that plenty of residents commute in but far enough from the lakefront to feel like its own town rather than a Chicago neighborhood that crossed a state line.

What Highland Drivers Actually Pay

Rate-comparison sources put Highland's full-coverage average somewhere between $1,100 and $1,600 a year, depending on the data source and driver profile behind the estimate. Either way, that tends to land under Indiana's $1,856 statewide full-coverage average, and minimum-liability policies track closer to the state's roughly $445/yr figure for a clean-record driver.

  • Highland estimate: roughly $1,100–$1,600/yr for full coverage, depending on source.
  • Indiana statewide average: $1,856/yr for full coverage.
  • Indiana statewide minimum-coverage average: around $445–$446/yr.

Income, Homeownership, and the Local Risk Picture

Highland's 2024 median household income runs around $78,062, above both the Indiana state median of $71,957 and the national figure. Homeownership sits at roughly 78.4%, high for a town this close to Chicago. That combination — stable homeownership, income above the state median — tends to correlate with fewer lapsed-policy claims and fewer uninsured-driver incidents, which feeds into somewhat more competitive pricing for the area over time.

Indiana's modified comparative fault rule carries a hard 51% bar: get found 51% or more responsible for a crash, and you recover nothing, from anyone. At busy Ridge Road and US-41 intersections, where cross-traffic and left turns create plenty of he-said-she-said accident scenarios, that rule is the reason documenting a crash — photos, witness names, a police report — matters more than most drivers assume until they need it.

Getting the Best Rate in Highland

  • Shop more than one carrier: the $1,100–$1,600 spread cited for Highland alone shows how much identical coverage can vary between insurers.
  • Keep uninsured motorist coverage in place: Indiana bundles it in by default, and about 1 in 7 drivers statewide carries none.
  • Raise liability past the state floor if you can: 25/50/25 is the legal minimum, not necessarily enough to cover a modern SUV repair or an ER visit after a real crash.
  • Quote your exact ZIP code: Highland sits close to several Lake County ZIP boundaries, and rates can shift depending on which one your car is registered under.

If you're trying to decide how much coverage your vehicle actually needs, our minimum vs. full coverage guide breaks down the trade-offs.

A town named for a sand ridge, grown on cabbage and kraut before it was ever a Chicago suburb, has ended up with insurance rates below the state average almost by accident of geography. Whether your own policy reflects that depends less on Highland's history and more on whether you've actually shopped it — which, if it's been a while, is worth doing before your next renewal lands.