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Santa Rosa MainStreet

Santa Rosa, the county seat of Guadalupe County, New Mexico was established as a village in 1901 at the junction of the El Paso Northwestern, and the Chicago, Rock Island, and Pacific railroads, although the family of Don Celso Baca had established a land grant and farming economy at the Agua Negra as early as 1825 and built a church and hacienda in the place that became Santa Rosa in 1865. 

The town of Santa Rosa became the center of an agrarian economy dependent on farming and ranching with the coming of the railroad in 1901.   One early description of the area was “the rolling hills are covered with a million sheep.” There were also the vaqueros and their cattle on the open range, and the farmers in the irrigated valleys of the Pecos.  The merchants came with the Santa Fe Trail and later from the rail head; they supplied the town from Las Vegas in the north.  At times they traded with the locals, but the emphasis was on creating a monetary economy designed to create a dependence on goods purchased with money.  For those who had no money, credit was freely offered for a signature on land holdings. 

The railroad was the key.  Warehouses, mercantile, saloons, hotels and eateries sprung up almost overnight. Age old game trails and trading routes followed the availability of water and became roads in the 1700’s, the1800’s and early 1900’s.  In 1926, a series of existing roads became Route 66, the first National Highway. The original alignment of Route 66 connected a potpourri of historic trails, wagon rutes and farm-to-market roads across America.   Route 66 was the driving force in the local economy until 1972