Four Hills in Albuquerque, NM

Four Hills sits at the southeast edge of Albuquerque, where the city meets the mouth of Tijeras Canyon, with Kirtland Air Force Base along its southern side and Sandia foothills open space to the east. Harry Driver's company began building here in 1957, on land homesteaded decades earlier by Hardy V. Logan and Wiley S. Johnson, whose Four Hills Ranch supplied the name. A private 18-hole course laid out by Bob Baldock, now run as The Canyon Club at Four Hills, anchors roughly 900 acres of foothill terrain. Mid-century houses in slump block and brick set the architectural tone, and there is no mandatory homeowners association.

Homesteaders Hardy V. Logan and Wiley S. Johnson held this ground before the Army Air Corps bought most of it in 1941 for the air base and what became Sandia National Laboratories; Johnson ran a riding academy in the arroyo until subdividing started. The course opened in 1958, the second country club built in Albuquerque.

Membership in the Four Hills Village Neighborhood Association is voluntary: no dues come with a purchase, and the group levies no fines. It publishes a policy on covenants and architectural control while stating that the original covenants are unenforceable under court precedent, which leaves city ordinances to govern building.

Four Hills Village is the original plat, recorded in numbered installments that still surface in property records. Four Hills Mobile is the mobile home park inside the same area, and Vista Four Hills is a smaller pocket carrying the same name. Villa Serena, approved in 1968 for 122 units, brought Spanish-influenced attached housing into the mix.

The neighborhood sits at the eastern entrance to the city. The Western Skies Motel marked that entrance until its demolition in 1988, and the Four Hills Village Shopping Center went up on the site.