Paradise Hills in Albuquerque, NM

Paradise Hills sits on the high ground west of the Rio Grande in northwest Albuquerque, an unincorporated pocket of Bernalillo County that the city grew around without absorbing. Horizon Corporation sold the land here in the early 1960s, and the street grid dates from that push. Paradise Hills Golf Course, a public Red Lawrence layout, borders the area on the east and lent its name to the country-club plats nearby. Zoning is a local matter: a state statute created the Paradise Hills Special Zoning District in 1982, and its own commission, not the county, handles what gets built. Piedras Marcadas Canyon and its petroglyphs lie a short drive west.

The start was rocky. Horizon Corporation sold undeveloped lots to buyers, and the Federal Trade Commission eventually moved against the company over false and misleading advertising, ordering it to pay purchasers back. The same ground had a brief run as a film location while Horizon still held it: Kirk Douglas's production company began shooting Lonely Are the Brave here on May 1, 1961.

The zoning district's commission is the zoning and enforcement body for the area and meets on a regular schedule. The comprehensive ordinance it works from had stood since 2009 until a full rewrite, which took effect on March 26, 2026.

The named pockets recorded inside the larger area run Seville, Knolls of Paradise Hills, Paradise Skies and Eagle Ridge. They read as plats within Paradise Hills rather than as separate places, and listings there tend to carry both names.