Barelas in Albuquerque, NM

Barelas is one of Albuquerque's oldest neighborhoods, a triangle of streets south of Downtown bounded by Coal Avenue, the BNSF railroad tracks and the Rio Grande, running south to Woodward Road. Colonial governor Diego de Peñalosa formally established it in 1662, and the name traces to Pedro Varela, an early landowner whose ranch sat near the river crossing on El Camino Real. Farming gave way to railroad work after the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe arrived in 1880 and built its locomotive shops on the eastern edge. Fourth Street, the neighborhood's spine, carried Route 66 from 1926.

South Fourth Street was listed on the National Register in 1997 as the Barelas-South Fourth Street Historic District, a linear corridor from Stover Avenue to Bridge Street. Its storefronts read as a timeline of roadside building: Mission-Mediterranean parapets and terra cotta after 1926, Streamlined Moderne curves, postwar International Style brick piers, then a 1960s drive-in modernism of articulated I-beams. Ruppe Drugs, the Red Ball Cafe and Ives Flower and Gift Shop opened along it and still operate.

The shops closed in 1970, taking 1,500 jobs with them, and Interstate 25 later pulled through traffic off Fourth Street. Urban renewal in the 1970s cleared most adobe houses south of Bridge Boulevard; blocks north of it kept theirs. A city master plan adopted in 2014 governs the rail yards, requiring workforce housing and a WHEELS Museum alongside preservation of the shop buildings; the seasonal Rail Yards Market fills them in the meantime.

Barelas Park, three and a half acres on 8th Street SW, sits between the community center and the senior center; its rebuilt court carries designs drawn from the rail yards, the zoo, El Camino Real and the National Hispanic Cultural Center. The community center holds a gymnasium, weight room, ceramics room and computer lab.