Village of Los Ranchos in Albuquerque, NM

Village of Los Ranchos is an incorporated municipality on the east bank of the Rio Grande, wrapped on its other three sides by Albuquerque and sitting within the wider North Valley. It incorporated in 1958 to head off annexation by the city, and the zoning has held the line ever since: agricultural-residential districts require one, two or three acres per house, which keeps the lanes green and the houses far apart. The village runs a 40-acre agri-nature center with demonstration fields, a community garden and walking trails, and it hosts a growers' and art market.

A plaza stood here around 1750; floodwater took it in 1904, and the land pattern it left behind still shows in the long narrow lots that once gave every parcel a share of the acequia and a piece of road frontage.

Governance is municipal rather than an association: the village writes its own zoning code and keeps Anderson Fields and Del Norte Open Space in public hands. Los Poblanos, once the ranch of Albert Simms and Ruth Hanna McCormick, stands among its historic properties.