A gentleman by the name of Orvis Horatio moved to Iowa from New York in the 1870s with his wife and young children. After a brief attempt at farming, the family moved to the north side of Des Moines, to a community then known as Forest Hills — what we now know as River Bend. Orvis' two sons worked in construction and helped build the Iowa State Capitol, as well as many houses in the Forest Hills neighborhood.

In his later years, Orvis went door-to-door around the north side of Des Moines, selling his sons' finely crafted homes and his own proprietary health tonic called the "Tree of Life," which featured a raccoon on the bottle’s logo.

Two of Orvis's daughters also went on to start their own families, who lived and worked in Des Moines for the next century. In the early 2000s, high school friends Alec Davis and Austin Baeth discovered through genealogy research that they were both descendants of those two daughters — third cousins once removed.

Years later, the pair, along with Alec's brother Evan Davis, decided to launch a hospitality company dedicated to bringing new and exciting food and beverage experiences to Des Moines. They named the company after their common forefather, Orvis, and dedicated their work to honoring the family legacy. 

In 2018, Orvis Horatio Group LLC was born. We added a Brit, Sam Hoyle, to the group too who, as far as we know, is not related — but that’s for another chapter. We started with Dough Co. Pizza, with locations in Drake and then Ankeny, and then the Des Moines Biergarten. We added Oktoberfest at Des Moines Biergarten to the list in 2025 as a signature event.

Highland Underground is the next chapter of that story — telling the narrative of a family, a neighborhood, and a city that has undergone many evolutions over the decades, yet remains rooted in its historic past. While Orvis was a teetotaler himself, we like to think that the libations offered at the Highland Underground would be so satisfactory that even the old man might fancy himself a drink. We couldn’t find the recipe to his Tree of Life health tonic though. 

Cheers from Orvis Horatio Group,
Alec, Austin, Evan & Sam