Today, Mead is a vibrant "Little Town with a Big Future," but when Lorin C. Mead homesteaded 80 acres in 1871, it was nothing more than virgin prairie with a small spring-fed pond he named Highland Lake after Sir Walter Scott's poem "The Lady of the Lake." In 1873, he completed the Highland Ditch and enlarged the pond into a reservoir. The availability of irrigation water attracted additional settlers, and soon a village named Highlandlake sprang...