I went to high school in that area and while there are some disadvantages, overall it is a good place to live. There are lots of members of the church if you are LDS. In fact, the town has about 40,000 people in it yet has eight or so wards. It also has its own mission now separate from the Albuquerque mission. We had released-time seminary there, which I really miss with a sophomore who has to get up at 5:15 for seminary.

As others have pointed out, there are great recreational opportunities. You are within 45 minutes of Durango CO, which in turn is in striking distance of many SW Colorado ski towns such as Telluride. Farmington itself is in a deserty area, but you drive 30 minutes north and you are entering the Rocky Mountains. It is less than two hours from Mesa Verde NP and is surrounded by different Native American ruins. It is also less than a days drive from the Grand Canyon and all of the S. Utah National Parks and Moab. The four wheeling and dirt biking opportunities are excellent in Farmington because the surrounding areas have tons and tons of dirt roads to support all of the natural gas wells.

In terms of the demography, like most towns it has very nice areas and less nice areas. If you can afford a $300,000-400,000 or higher home you will be in the really nice parts of town. It is true that there are some issues with gangs and drugs in certain areas. Seemed to me that some of the neighboring towns like Bloomfield had more of an issue with this than Farmington itself, but I could be wrong. New Mexico is a border state and that brings some challenges. I would say that the area is very diverse, with approximately 1/3 Native American, 1/3 hispanic, and 1/3 white. Like anywhere else, if your kids hang out with the right kids it is fine. I would agree that the economy is very cyclical there, because it is highly dependent on how the natural gas and other natural resource industries are doing.