Rio Rancho North in Rio Rancho, NM

Rio Rancho North is the city's northern market area, spread along U.S. 550 and reached from Unser Boulevard. It works as a container for several separate developments rather than a single platted place. Enchanted Hills, a roughly 2,000-acre subdivision begun in the late 1990s, opened the area; Mariposa, Lomas Encantadas and a run of newer D.R. Horton subdivisions filled in around it. Associations are standard across the newer subdivisions, part of the area falls inside a public improvement district formed in 2016, and builders are still working through lots here. City parks and a paved path system run through the older sections.

The public improvement district shared by Lomas Encantadas and Enchanted Hills was enacted by city resolution in 2016. It spans about 357 acres, 320 of them in Lomas Encantadas and 37 in Enchanted Hills, and finances sanitary sewer, water, drainage, park and trail work along with the grading and landscaping that goes with it. The Lomas Encantadas portion runs to the Venada Arroyo on the south and Rio Rancho Estates Unit 20 on the west.

Mariposa is the largest piece, a 6,500-acre master-planned development on the northwest side with a community center, indoor and outdoor pools, a fitness room, playgrounds and a trail network, plus a 2,200-acre preserve held in partnership with The Nature Conservancy. Lomas Encantadas and Enchanted Hills share the district described above and most of the older street grid. Mountain Hawk and Cleveland Heights are D.R. Horton neighborhoods, the second phase of Cleveland Heights laid out near Paseo del Volcan and Loma Colorado Boulevard. Niklas Ridge rounds out the group with larger, custom-built lots.

Enchanted Hills Park gives the older sections nine acres of basketball courts, picnic tables, grills, a shade structure and a walking loop. The Enchanted Hills Path adds a 22-acre trail corridor between Chayote Road and Safelite Boulevard.

U.S. 550 forms the northern edge of the Enchanted Hills tract and is the main through route across this part of the city; Unser Boulevard is the other way in, running up from the rest of Rio Rancho. Albuquerque sits about 25 minutes south.