LAND of PLENTY

This three-part series examines how JAMES BEN ALI HAGGIN, inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2022, created a farm whose acreage produced generations of important horses through a succession of owners to this day.

By Edward L. Bowen

L. Bowen

JAMES BEN ALI HAGGIN is identifed as a “transformational breeder” of racehorses on the plaque commemorating his induction as a Pillar of the Turf in the National Museum of Racing Hall of Fame. It is hardly an overstatement, for much of Haggin’s career supported Shakespeare’s observation that “Tere is a tide in the afairs of man, which, taken at the food, leads on to fortune.”

Born of modest means in Kentucky, Haggin worked through the educational phase of being a “self-made man” before being drawn to the West and its kaleidoscope of opportunities loosely tied to the discovery of gold. Fortunes made in that milieu included vast success by some individuals providing supplies and services to the intrepid prospectors drawn by the giddy images of fabulous wealth. In Haggin’s case, the idea of providing legal services soon was merged with mining opportunities, and his individual choice of what to do with the wealth that followed soon labeled him as the largest breeder of Toroughbreds in the world.

Tis status led him back to Kentucky, where he took the existing core of Elmendorf Farm and multiplied its acreage many fold. Te surrounding properties he purchased fourished over the years for various subsequent owners until Paris Pike near Lexington became something of a Park Avenue of the horse world. As major Eastern breeders such as the Whitneys and Wideners were seduced by the appeals of raising horses on bluegrass and limestone soil, those properties proved rich veins in their own version of mining. Today, more than a century afer Haggin’s days, that status remains under names including Spendthrif Farm, Gainesway Farm, and Normandy Farm. Yes, indeed, “transformational” was an apt choice of wording.

In 2022, looking ahead to Haggin’s Pillars of the Turf induction, Brien Bouyea was preparing an article for the Hall of Fame commemorative publication. As the Hall of Fame’s communications director as well as a veteran author and historian, Bouyea is well aware of the tradition of Turf writers’ tendency to employ roundhouse descriptions of Haggin’s breeding operation. Te late Kent Hollingsworth, longtime editor of Te Blood-Horse, for example, remarked in “Te Great Ones” that at one phase America’s largest Toroughbred breeder was buying and selling “carloads of yearlings” while also keeping enough homebreds to distribute 100 yearlings among several trainers.

Bouyea found a New York Times article that gave some specifcs, to wit, that in 1904 “when about 7,000 broodmares” were ofcially registered with Te Jockey Club, “1,500 of the 7,000 were owned by James B. Haggin.” Moreover, Haggin also owned some “60 stallions, 500 yearlings, and 500