Valencia CDP (Santa Fe County), NM

Valencia is an unincorporated community and census-designated place in eastern Santa Fe County, at the southern end of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Glorieta sits on its eastern edge, and Interstate 25 crosses the community at Exit 297 before climbing toward Glorieta Pass. That makes the local map unusually easy to read: Valencia is a small mountain-edge place between Santa Fe, about 17 miles northwest, and Las Vegas, New Mexico, about 49 miles east.

The pass has carried people through this part of New Mexico for a long time. The road corridor follows the same broad gateway that made Glorieta Pass important in territorial and Civil War history, while today's schools and highway exits handle the everyday connections. Valencia is in Santa Fe Public Schools, with El Dorado Community School for kindergarten through eighth grade and Santa Fe High School for the upper grades. The local scoop is that Valencia is a tiny CDP with a big road role, sitting where the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, I-25, Glorieta Pass, and the Santa Fe school system meet.