High

High, on the old Kaufman road five miles west of Canton in west central Van Zandt County, was founded in the fall of 1852 when Samuel A. High of Tennessee, the area's first permanent landowner, purchased several hundred acres of land and established a settlement that became a stopping place for ox wagons and cattle herds going to market in Shreveport and Jefferson. In 1859 T. J. High donated land for a community cemetery. By 1890 a school was being conducted in a log building on the land of Dick High, a son of Samuel; the school's enrollment was forty-seven in 1906. It was later moved to a site near the cemetery. The 1936 county highway map showed a church and cemetery at High. In the 1950s the community's school was consolidated with the Canton Independent School District. A 1987 map showed High with a church and cemetery.