Standing on farmland his family has owned since 1885, 90-year-old Rutledge Haggard is both an institution in Plano and something of an anachronism at a Haggard Farm groundbreaking for what comes next.
He is the living link to a Plano that has almost disappeared. At a December 2025 groundbreaking for Haggard Farm, a new $300 million mixed-use development in west Plano, I parked in tall pasture grass within earshot of rush-hour traffic on the Tollway. This looked less like a developer groundbreaking and more like a Haggard family reunion.
In many cases, it was. Men in cowboy hats gathered around a cinder block firepit while women in tall leather boots talked at picnic tables scattered across the grass. Nearby stood an old house, the Fox-Haggard House, which was set to become a focal point of this future development.
“The house behind you is where my grandfather was born,” Rutledge told the crowd. “It was built in the mid 1850s and is the oldest house in Plano. We actually moved it from a park down on Windhaven and Spring Creek…