Los Poblanos in Albuquerque, NM

Los Poblanos is a North Valley neighborhood in Albuquerque, wrapped around the historic ranch of the same name off Rio Grande Boulevard near Montano Road. The land was part of the Elena Gallegos land grant around 1716 and was held by the Armijo family through the 19th century; Albert and Ruth Hanna McCormick Simms reassembled it in the 1930s and commissioned architect John Gaw Meem in 1932 to rebuild the residence and design the La Quinta cultural center. Farming still sets the tone. The City of Albuquerque bought 138 acres of the old fields in 1997, and residents walk the farm roads and ditch banks that thread through them.

The open space is split between two governments: the city annexed the lower 48 acres, while the upper 90 sit inside the Village of Los Ranchos de Albuquerque, which contributed to the purchase along with Bernalillo County and the state. Agriculture stays the primary use. Several farmers work portions of the ground, and the rest has gone to wildlife habitat, community gardens and organic fields. Three loops of roughly one to two miles run over wide farm roads and ditch banks, open to walking, jogging, bicycling and horseback riding.

The fields count among the oldest worked ground in the Rio Grande Valley, part of one of its earliest Spanish Colonial settlements. Through the 1930s and 1940s the ranch ran as an experimental farm, home to Creamland Dairies and to trials on dairy breeds and sugar beets, while La Quinta carried the political and cultural gatherings the Simms family built around it. Meem's Pueblo Revival buildings and Rose Greely's gardens survive at the working farm that still carries the name.