Santa Rosa locals say ‘Mother Road’ business booming, and now they have a musical road
New Mexico Tourism Department officials say the state is rebounding from late-2025 tourism disruptions and that the upcoming Fourth of July weekend — which marks a big opportunity for communities along Route 66 — is shaping up to meet their expectations despite sharp increases in travel-related costs, including gas prices.
Acting Tourism Department Secretary Lancing Adams told lawmakers during a committee hearing this week that travel-related inflation across the state is up nearly 10%, driven mostly by increased gas prices that started creeping up shortly after President Donald Trump launched a military operation in Iran in February.
According to the American Automobile Association, the average price per gallon of unleaded gasoline is about $3.78 as of July 1. That’s lower than $4.08 last month but nearly a dollar more than the statewide average this time last year.
Lancing told lawmakers on the interim Rural and Economic Development Committee that despite the increased cost of gasoline, tourism indicators such as hotel room occupancy and air passenger travel are “holding steady,” largely due to continued demand among high-income earners.
Lancing also highlighted the state’s efforts to celebrate Route 66 this year as a way of attracting more “economy” travelers. The road runs for nearly 500 miles across the state through Santa Rosa, Gallup and Albuquerque, among other cities. To support their efforts to commemorate the route’s 100-year anniversary, the department provided roughly $4 million to municipalities that are celebrating for improvements such as the beautification of highway overpasses in Guadalupe County and an improved gateway to Albuquerque’s Old Town.
The department has also paid for marketing and special events across the state, including $4,000 for the Pinto Bean Route 66 Centennial Fiesta in Moriarty.
“What I’m hoping, as we go throughout the year with the Route 66 centennial and all the promotions we’ve been doing with our Route 66 communities, that you start to see, on an economy side, some improvements,” Lancing said.
Tourism Department Communications Director Cody Johnson told Source NM that projecting the economic impact of Route 66 tourism on the Fourth of July weekend is difficult. Still, he provided data showing that the Route 66 towns of Gallup, Tucumcari, Albuquerque and Santa Rosa have all received similar percentages of their spending from visitors between April and late June this year compared to the same period last year.
“In regards to what this means for Route 66 travel now and looking forward, there are a couple of reasons to be slightly optimistic,” he said.
One reason he cited is that AAA projects similar numbers of drivers to hit the roads this Fourth of July weekend as last year. Also, the University of Michigan Index of Consumer Sentiment reported an uptick in June in consumers’ feelings about the economy, the first such increase since February.
Netta Montgomery, a lifelong Santa Rosa resident who serves on the town’s Route 66 Centennial Committee, told Source NM on Thursday that gas prices don’t seem to have dampened tourism in her town in recent months, and she hopes tourism will only increase along Route 66 throughout the rest of the year.
She expects the town to be “overloaded” this Fourth of July weekend, during which the town will accentuate Independence Day celebrations with Route 66 banners along lightpoles and a parade of classic cars.
And she said she was “so excited” about a recent development: The town has finally completed its “musical road” along Route 66 east of town with the help of a $60,000 Tourism Department grant and donations of money and labor from local company San Bar Construction.
As of June 30, she said, drivers along that stretch of road can steer their vehicles onto the shoulder, and the spacing between rumble strips will produce a tune resembling “America the Beautiful.”
“They just, just finished it. In fact, the local people already said, ‘We rode through it! We rode through it!” she said, before pausing to take her breath. “Sorry, I get pretty excited.”
