Los Duranes in Albuquerque, NM

Los Duranes is one of Albuquerque's oldest neighborhoods, a Spanish farming plaza founded by the Duran family in the 1700s and still shaped by the acequia that runs through it. It sits in the near North Valley between Rio Grande Boulevard and the river, with Interstate 40 along its southern edge since the 1960s, when the highway severed the old link to Old Town. Long, narrow farm lots survive alongside adobe and pitched-roof houses, and low-density agricultural zoning holds the semi-rural feel. A city community center and the park beside it stand within walking distance of the Rio Grande bosque.

Several street names come from the families who once held the large land tracts here: Los Luceros, Gabaldon, Montoya, Zickert, Rice. The adobe chapel of San Jose de los Duranes, built around 1890 and restored by residents in the early 1980s, was listed on the National Register in 1984.

No homeowners association governs the area; a voluntary neighborhood association represents it, and zoning inherited from the 1976 sector plan keeps most parcels in a low-density agricultural residential category.