What's Actually Original at The Club at Mustang Lakes, and What Just Looks That Way

"We believed we really had something special because this property is overflowing with natural beauty, lakes, rolling terrain, mature trees throughout the property, as well as the rich history of the land. It is simply as good as it gets."

That's Debbie Wilson of Cambridge Companies, talking about the land that became Mustang Lakes. Pieces of the 1980s horse ranch remain part of the community. At The Club, you can find some of them if you know where to look.

The Ranch Before the Rooftops

Before it was Mustang Lakes, this land was Twin Eagles Farms, a working thoroughbred operation owned by Bob Folsom, who served as mayor of Dallas from 1976 to 1981. Folsom was an Oak Cliff native who went to Sunset High School, played football at West Point and then SMU, and spent his pre-mayor career developing real estate, including the entire Bent Tree area straddling what's now the Dallas North Tollway. He bought the land in the mid-1980s after selling his previous ranch, La Cima, in McKinney.

Twin Eagles was no hobby spread. At roughly 800 acres, it included a main ranch house, indoor and outdoor riding arenas, five barns, and a home for the ranch foreman. Horses were bred, raised, and trained there for years, and at least one, a mare named Reluctant Guest, was named Mare of the Year in 1989. It's a detail from the land's working history before it became a community.

What Cambridge Kept, Piece by Piece

When Cambridge Companies bought Twin Eagles to build Mustang Lakes, pieces of the original ranch house were incorporated into the new development, according to the community's own history.

The brick from the original ranch house was reused in the construction of The Club at Mustang Lakes, the community's 12,000-square-foot amenity center. The ranch's original front doors weren't scrapped either. They now hang as art, flanking the outdoor living area. The cast stone fireplace that once warmed the Folsom family's living room sits today in The Club's parlor, doing the same job it always did, just for a different set of neighbors. And the eagle statues that stood at the ranch's original entrance were relocated to the private island in the community's lake, where they now stand watch over the water.

The trees tell the same story on a bigger scale. Dozens of mature oaks that predate the neighborhood by decades were preserved rather than cleared. Each one weighed somewhere between 45,000 and 75,000 pounds, and each one was wrapped in wire and burlap to protect its root ball before being lifted by crane and replanted along the entry drive and around the amenity center. That's why the oak canopy near the front of Mustang Lakes looks like it's been there for half a century. It has been. It just used to shade a different building.

Not everything at The Club is original. The pools, the tennis courts, the fitness center, and the amphitheater are all new construction, added to wrap around the salvaged pieces rather than replace them. The Club at Mustang Lakes received the National Association of Home Builders' award for Best Community Amenity in 2019, in a field that included entries from across North America.

Where to Look Next Time You're There

If you've walked past these details a hundred times without registering them, you're not alone. None of this is marked with a plaque. Next time you're at The Club, here's what's worth a second glance:

• The parlor fireplace, which is the original cast stone fireplace from the Folsom family's living room
• The pair of doors flanking the outdoor living area, salvaged from the original ranch house
• The eagle statues on the private island, moved there from the ranch's original entrance
• The oversized, gnarled oaks lining the entry drive, each one older than the neighborhood itself
• A handful of barns and paddocks that still stand quietly elsewhere on the property, left in place rather than torn out

None of these are hidden exactly. They're just easy to walk past when you're carrying pool bags or chasing a toddler toward the splash pad.

Twin Eagles and the Ranch's Name

Mustang Lakes is organized into eleven distinct villages: Belmont, Bridlewood, Elmbrook, Lakeside, Oaklawn, Rolling Hills, Rosebrook, Saddleridge, Twin Eagles, Waterview, and Woodhaven. Twin Eagles is the village whose name carries the ranch's former name forward. It's a small enclave of executive lots, 100 feet wide by 175 feet deep, with views of two of the community's lakes and prices that start around $1.46 million.

The Part That's Easy to Miss

At Mustang Lakes, the history of Twin Eagles remains visible in physical features from the original property: the brick under your hand in the parlor, the doors you walk past on the way to the outdoor living area, the eagles watching the lake, and the oaks that have been standing since before most of the homes around them existed. Those details are worth knowing the next time you're at The Club and someone asks why the place feels like it's been there longer than it has.

If you're curious about more of what makes this stretch of Celina tick, or you just want to talk shop about a neighborhood you already know well, LivingWell Realty keeps close tabs on Mustang Lakes and the rest of Collin County. And if the conversation ever turns to what your own home in Mustang Lakes might be worth in today's market, that's a conversation we're always glad to have.