The scenery along Plano’s stretch of the Dallas North Tollway is a picture of progress in the making, according to the Dallas Morning News.

While a new crop of corporate headquarters in Legacy business park — like Toyota, Liberty Mutual Insurance, and JPMorgan Chase — represent a booming economic development yield, cultivated sorghum fields on Spring Creek Parkway give tollway commuters a glimpse of where today’s progress began. 

Clearly, the west Collin County land is fertile for changing dynamics.

Roots for both the Haggard and Baccus families have been planted in Plano for more than a century.

In the late 1800’s, father and son John and Clinton Shepard Haggard were among early pioneers who settled in the area, and the family eventually owned miles of farmland from what is now the Tollway to North Central Expressway.

The Haggards still own over 300 acres at the southeast corner of Spring Creek Parkway and the Tollway. Though the tract will likely contain a mixed-use development someday, the family continues to farm the land.

Legacy at Spring Creek Development / Courtesy of Gensler

Across the street, the Baccus family — whose area lineage also dates back to the 1800s — owns the northwest corner. The family and Dallas developer Provident Realty are partnering to build a 38-acre mixed-use development there called The Legacy at Spring Creek, which will contain three office towers, a boutique hotel, and about 50,000 square-feet of retail space.

The family’s original land holdings were vast as evidenced by the Baccus Family Cemetery that’s located in the heart of the Shops at Legacy West. 

Baccus heirs, the Beatty family, have likewise entered into a partnership to build a seven-story office building on the west side of the tollway. But for today, the site continues to reflect its 100-year heritage. 

"We're still growing crops there," Scott Beatty told the Dallas Morning News. "We have horses on the west side.”