The North Valley is Albuquerque's Eden, at once its paradise and its lost garden.

I can't think of another big city in America that has an undeveloped, almost wild river running through it like Albuquerque has. And that river, with its cottonwood forest known as the "bosque" and its verdant irrigation ditches, is what makes the North Valley a rural oasis even in the hectic hassle of the modern Duke City.

A century ago, the Middle Rio Grande was known as the American Nile. It watered huge farms and orchards in the Valley's fertile bottom lands. For 40 years after the railroad arrived in 1880, fruits and vegetables were shipped all the way to California. Even in the 1960s, when agriculture was no longer a major economic force in Albuquerque, the Valley was dominated by open spaces, bosques, alfalfa fields, vineyards, truck farms, and orchards that rooted the city to the New Mexican earth and its cultures.

When I first came to Albuquerque in 1958, the North Valley was still a bastion of Hispanic New Mexico and a shopping area for Pueblo Indians from north of the city. You could find mysterious herbal remedies, sheep's heads, and other delicacies in the markets along north Fourth Street and hear the musical sounds of the Tiwa and Keresan languages mingling with Spanish.

I've lived in the North Valley since 1962. I still consider it a paradise, even if it is a lost garden, too. Albuquerque's population explosion, two new bridges emptying traffic from the West Mesa onto rickety North Valley streets, and massive infill development have transformed a rural area into what could generously be called a "semi-rural" suburb. But the basic character of the North Valley still survives. The ditch system is intact, with its gorgeous wooded trails crisscrossing the length and breadth of the bottom lands. From some ditches, you can see the Sandias from their most spectacular angle and the West Mesa volcanoes, too. If you're in the right place, the whole rest of this city of half a million completely disappears. And shopping along North Fourth, you find the linguistic and cultural mix is still as vibrant as any place in northern New Mexico. When you drive west down what used to be old sand hills from the heights, crossing Edith Boulevard is still like crossing not only a time line, but a culture zone. It almost seems like a different country.

Like what you see? Subscribe here.

Copyright 2001
Hacienda Press