Las Cruces officially launched a self-guided film tour Monday, giving fans a printed and online map to retrace scenes from movies and TV shows shot around the city and Doña Ana County. The tour debuted with a launch event at the Rio Grande Theatre running from 5:30 to 7 p.m., pairing a new brochure with a gallery display of props, posters and behind-the-scenes details drawn from local productions.
The event, organized by KFOX14/CBS4, featured remarks from Las Cruces Mayor Eric Enriquez, Film Las Cruces President Jeff Steinborn, Visit Las Cruces Executive Director Rochelle Miller-Hernandez, and Las Cruces International Film Festival Executive Director Ross Marks. Steinborn told attendees that film tourism is a growing sector of economic development, while Miller-Hernandez said Las Cruces has always been a cinematic destination. Visit Las Cruces collaborated with Film Las Cruces to premiere the tour and worked with local tour operator Southwest Expeditions, which launched its own commercial guided tour option this month to shuttle visitors directly to filming locations throughout the city, according to Visit Las Cruces.
Sundance Winners and Familiar Faces on the Route
The self-guided tour includes locations from both independent films and major productions, letting participants explore Las Cruces at their own pace through a filmmaker's lens, per KFOX14/CBS4's reporting. Among the stops is the Road Runner Rest Stop, which appeared in the 2024 drama In the Summers, starring Sasha Calle, Leslie Grace and Lío Mehiel. Directed by Alessandra Lacorazza and shot locally in 2023, In the Summers won both the U.S. Dramatic Grand Jury Prize and the Directing Award at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, as reported by the Associated Press.
The tour also highlights Red Hawk Golf Course, a filming location for the 2021 faith-based comedy Walking with Herb, which starred George Lopez, Edward James Olmos and Kathleen Quinlan. Directed by New Mexico State University professor Ross Marks, the film was shot entirely in Las Cruces and Artesia and employed 40 local actors and nearly 300 New Mexico crew members, according to Desert Exposure. Props from the film are now on display in the Rio Grande Theatre gallery alongside the tour's launch materials. Dripping Springs, another stop on the route, appeared in Tyler Perry's Joe's College Roadtrip.
A Filmmaker's Hangout and a Growing Talent Pipeline
Local filmmaking culture runs deeper than any single production. The Wrap, described as the local filmmaker's hangout, is held every month at the Rio Grande Theatre and screens short films made by area creators; a family-friendly version called School Wrap extends that programming to younger audiences. That community infrastructure sits alongside New Mexico State University's Creative Media Institute, which supplies a vital talent pipeline for regional film shoots, though faculty have pointed to historical challenges with graduate brain drain when steady production work isn't available locally, per Filmmaker Magazine.
Local leaders view dedicated soundstage infrastructure as key to keeping those graduates in town. State and university leaders broke ground in September 2025 on Arrowhead Park Studios, a $15 million, 36,400-square-foot public-private soundstage complex at NMSU designed to host major productions and provide paid student internships, according to the Las Cruces Bulletin. A separate $27 million studio is also under construction in Doña Ana County. Las Cruces was named one of the top 10 best places to live and work as a moviemaker for the fourth consecutive year by MovieMaker Magazine.
Tax Incentives Fuel a Rural Production Boom
The tour arrives as Las Cruces and Doña Ana County lean into a financial edge built into state policy. Under New Mexico's film tax incentive framework, productions filming in the area qualify for a 10% Rural Uplift tax credit on top of the state's 25% base refundable credit, giving southern New Mexico a 35% base advantage over Albuquerque and Santa Fe, according to Film Las Cruces. That advantage operates within statewide limits: New Mexico's Film Production Tax Credit Act caps total annual credit payouts, with the limit set at $140 million for fiscal year 2026 and structured to rise by $10 million annually until reaching $160 million in fiscal year 2029, per the New Mexico Film Guide.
The results show up in the ledger. Film productions generated $41.5 million in spending across Doña Ana County during fiscal year 2026, resulting in $19.5 million in total economic impact according to a New Mexico Film Office analysis, with $12.2 million in direct local spending. The county accounted for 13% of all film spending statewide that year and hosted 13 of New Mexico's 63 film productions, meaning more than one in five New Mexico productions filmed there. Film activity generated $281,000 in gross receipts for the city of Las Cruces, $151,000 for the county, and $349,000 for the state, along with $30,000 to $40,000 in lodgers tax and 9,803 local hotel room nights. That growth builds on a longer trend: rural film production spending across New Mexico totaled $50 million in fiscal year 2022, with Las Cruces and Doña Ana County accounting for more than $37 million of that total, according to a SAG-AFTRA report.
Behind the Numbers, a Cautionary Tale
Film Las Cruces worked with more than 200 local businesses and 907 local crew members during fiscal year 2026, prepared 37 location packages for prospective productions, coordinated 41 location scouts and processed 70 film permits. Southern New Mexico's desert terrain and historic architecture have drawn independent filmmakers for decades; the earliest recorded feature film produced in the area was the 1965 movie The Devil's Mistress, directed by NMSU film professor Orville Wanzer.
Not every venture has paid off. In February, the Las Cruces City Council voted to terminate its three-year economic development agreement with California-based 828 Productions and demand repayment of $1.3 million after the company failed to build a planned $75 million studio facility or meet job creation goals, according to the Las Cruces Sun-News. City officials reported the company created only 9 permanent local jobs out of the 100 it had promised. Even amid that setback, officials have continued investing in university-anchored infrastructure like Arrowhead Park Studios rather than pulling back from the industry altogether.
The self-guided film tour brochure is now available in print and online, giving visitors and locals alike a new way to trace the region's on-screen history at their own pace.
