El Rancho, NM

El Rancho is a Santa Fe County census-designated place of 1,120 residents in the 2020 census, part of the Santa Fe metropolitan area in the Pojoaque Valley just north of Santa Fe. The valley sits between the Jemez Mountains and the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, with El Rancho sharing its school and service geography with nearby Pueblo and valley communities. It is a place whose daily orientation comes from the larger valley rather than a separate downtown. Pojoaque Valley Schools serves El Rancho along with Nambé, Jaconita, Tesuque, Arroyo Seco, Cundiyo, and San Ildefonso, operating one elementary, intermediate, middle, sixth-grade academy, and high school.

The El Rancho Community and Senior Center occupies a former schoolhouse built in 1941; the school closed in 1967, and Santa Fe County received the building in 1977. That old schoolhouse, the shared district, and the mountain-framed valley give El Rancho a specific local shape close to Santa Fe but rooted in the communities around Pojoaque Pueblo.