Rio Rancho is a suburb of Albuquerque located northwest of the city. The second largest city in New Mexico, it boasts a population of around 60,000. Unlike many suburbs, it is more than a bedroom community; Intel has a large chip manufacturing plant there. There are no freeways connecting Rio Rancho to Albuquerque, so residents are forced to take surface roads into town.

"Rio Rancho" means "river ranch" in Spanish.

I am a resident of this town and am not too fond of it. I guess I don't mind how quiet it is, but there's not a whole lot that goes on here. The main state road running through Rio Rancho is NM 528. Rio Rancho estates was established in 1964. John Jennings is the current mayor of Rio Rancho. There are 6 districts in Rio Rancho and six district governors, along with the mayor, make up the governing body.
Michael Williams(district1)
Jack Thomas (district2)
Felice Truscio (district3)
Howard Balmer (district4)
Joan Kellogg (district5)
David Bency (district6)
Rio Rancho is constantly growing. There hasn't been a single day I've lived here where I didn't see something new going up.

If you go through Rio Rancho estates and continue west, you'll end up in the middle of nowhere. I spent two summers there. Most of it belongs to the King family, one of whom used to be the Governor of New Mexico. Many, many thousands of years ago, native americans roamed the area and recently the area has been the subject of archaeological investigations. A female archaeologist by the name of Cynthia Irwin Williams used to run an archaeological field school there with some student volunteers and some paid volunteers from Earthwatch. Trust me, it is in the middle of nowhere.

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