Families Across Valencia County Celebrate Easter With Community Egg Hunts

Children scrambled across the grass at Eagle Park in Belen and Heritage Park in Los Lunas on Saturday as Valencia County families turned out for Easter egg hunts organized by a network of local civic partners, police, and businesses, with opportunities to meet the Easter Bunny and compete for golden egg prizes.

The Los Lunas hunt at Heritage Park was co-organized by the Los Lunas Police Department and Albertsons, with volunteers, parents, and city staff helping children fill their baskets. In Belen, the City of Belen Parks and Recreation program staged the Eagle Park event, drawing families for what has become one of the most recognizable free community traditions in the county. A photo gallery published by the Valencia County News-Bulletin captured the scramble from both locations, from kids unearthing golden eggs tucked in the grass to children posing with the Easter Bunny.

The festivities extend into Wednesday: the Village of Los Lunas Parks and Recreation Department is hosting another hunt at the Los Lunas Sports Complex on NM Highway 314 north of Morris Road on April 2 at 5:30 p.m., open to children 12 and younger. The Sports Complex event has a multi-year documented history going back at least to March 2024, when organizers ran three separate age-divided waves across a two-hour window. When wind and inclement weather threatened one prior year's outdoor run at the same venue, organizers moved the entire event indoors to the Daniel Fernandez Recreation Center rather than cancel.

Across the Rio Grande, the Rio Communities Optimist Club hosts its own parallel hunt at Tierra del Sol Golf Club in Rio Communities, extending the county's Easter programming beyond the two larger municipalities.

For a county where the 2023 median household income of $58,333 sits below the national median, free events organized around parks and police departments carry practical weight. Valencia County's population reached approximately 80,813 in 2024, up roughly 6% from the 2020 census, with a community that is approximately 60.6% Hispanic and holds an 83.2% homeownership rate, nearly 20 points above the national average. That combination of growth and deep residential investment creates steady demand for programming that asks nothing more of families than showing up with a basket.

The Los Lunas Police Department, which frames its mission as "building relationships, solving problems, and making a Difference" and counts more than 11,350 followers on Facebook, has made events like the Heritage Park hunt a visible pillar of its community-policing approach. The presence of Albertsons alongside LLPD officers and city volunteers at Heritage Park illustrated how local institutions can converge around a single afternoon of egg collecting.

Prior coverage of the Rio Communities hunt made plain how little weather deters participation. Even cold, rainy, and sleety conditions one spring could not thin the crowd: "the kids showed up and still had a lot of fun." That resilience has defined Easter programming in Valencia County across years and venues, and this weekend was no exception.