Rio Rancho Mid-West in Rio Rancho, NM

Rio Rancho Mid-West is one of the map areas covering the west side of Rio Rancho, reaching from the city's paved edge toward open mesa that Sandoval County describes as largely vacant. Most of it lies on the Rio Rancho Estates plat, which AMREP laid out between 1960 and 1975 as half-acre and one-acre parcels and sold through a long advertising campaign to buyers around the world. Houses arrived later and in pieces, and the pattern still shows: finished subdivisions near the city core, a scatter of newer builder neighborhoods, and long stretches where the street grid exists mainly on paper.

No fully paved north-south road runs west of Unser Boulevard, and some of the developing pockets out there sit more than four miles from one, so residents drive dirt roads that bad weather can turn difficult or impassable. The state transportation department is extending Paseo del Volcan to link Southern and Northern boulevards on pavement, which shortens trips to work and school and gives police, fire and medical crews a way in.