Alvarado Gardens in Albuquerque, NM

Alvarado Gardens is a semi-rural neighborhood in Albuquerque's North Valley, bounded by Campbell and Vicic roads on the south, Candelaria and Veranda roads on the north, Rio Grande Boulevard on the east and the Rio Grande bosque on the west. Platted in 1931 and taken into the city in 1952, it filled in lot by lot rather than as one developer's tract, and its parcels still follow the lines of the irrigation ditches that watered the valley's farms. Several of those ditches remain in use. Lot sizes range from modest to a few acres, and keeping livestock and growing crops remains part of the pattern.

Before the houses, this was working farmland: a truck farm run by the Yonemoto family, a slaughterhouse, a government sheep station. Drainage work by the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District in the 1930s lowered the water table enough to make the ground both farmable and habitable. The whole neighborhood carried agricultural zoning in 1950; a residential rezoning followed in 1954 for the strip between the Duranes ditch and Glenwood Road.

There is no homeowners association and no mandatory assessment. The Alvarado Gardens Neighborhood Association is the city-recognized group here, open to anyone who lives or owns property inside the boundaries; it asks for a voluntary annual donation, runs a listserv, and elects officers at an annual meeting. Some townhouse groupings inside the area carry dues of their own.

The Rio Grande Nature Center State Park sits at the west end of Candelaria Road inside the neighborhood, with a visitor center, wildlife blinds and a pond, and its grounds include Candelaria Farms, the last large agricultural holding inside the city. Campbell Road reaches an access point for the Paseo del Bosque Trail, sixteen paved miles along the river that cross no roads.