Patricia Highsmith and her ashes were interred in its columbarium. She left her estate, worth an estimated $3 million, and the promise of any future royalties to the Yaddo colony, where she spent two months in 1948 writing the draft of "Strangers on a Train". Highsmith bequeathed her literary estate to the Swiss Literary Archives at the Swiss National Library in Bern, Switzerland. Her Swiss publisher, Diogenes Verlag, was appointed literary executor of the estate. Highsmith was a resolute atheist. Although she considered herself a liberal, and in her school years had gotten along with Black students, in later years she became
Carol M. Highsmith to grow to the largest photographic born digital collection at the Library of Congress. This archive, "Carol M. Highsmith's America: Documenting the 21st Century", includes 1,000 images taken across the country. The collection emphasizes what Highsmith calls "Disappearing America," including 200 shots taken along U.S. Route 66 in Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and Oklahoma. "The more she travels across the country, the more convinced she is about the need to capture in photographs a rapidly changing America," noted a Library of Congress bulletin. The America I knew is disappearing at lightning speed,' [Highsmith] observed." Highsmith also produced a visual study