They raise corn in New Mexico.
Along with random ghost gas stations, there are entire ghost towns:
And other towns have managed to persist, and even thrive, increasingly by many retro fans of Route 66 including Europeans for whom its a destination-vacation.
Motel owned by a retired airline pilot:
But even surviving towns have remnants about to rubble-ize, as this leaning example is soon to experience.
New Mexico as much of the Southwest has vast stretches of near-empty land but for cattle and grasslands.
As there are towns and stations that have ended their time, so indeed it happens to all of us, more than 150,000 a DAY, a MILLION a week (worldwide data), once it will include me (and you): as it is written, “it is appointment unto man once to die, and after that the judgment” (New Testament Epistle to the Hebrews 9:27). Here is the poignant rustic cemetery affiliated with the Catholic Church of Santa Rosa NM. There is a kind of sharing going on here, as the Protestants, who are apparently a minority in this community, are also buried here in the area further into the picture:
Here, by the cemetery, is a fellow traveler encounter. The couple in the brown t-shirts are local ranchers, transplants, long ago, from North Dakota. The lady on the right, her husband (taking the picture), and their sweet doggie, are exploring Route 66 by car, from their home in St Louis. And in another small world story, the St Louis couple were also born in North Dakota, and I spent multiple weeks in North Dakota this past summer at Medora ND and the Theodore Roosevelt National Park. How improbable is that? 
The Catholic Church of Santa Rosa
Santa Rose is famous for “the Blue Hole,” a deep very clear water hole connected down to an underground spring. NM has little rain, but it does have water.
The Hole is only a couple of hundred feet in diameter.
East of Santa Fe along the ancient Santa Fe riding trail is a Pueblo National Park. It is named after an important and prosperous Native American tribe whose headquarters and now ruins were located. There is a museum and guided walking trail that enables one to capture a partial mental picture of what life was like here less than 1000 years ago.
The Catholic priests established an initial massive “mission church” shown by the faint outline in the below. As described further below, there was a “Pueblo Revolt” that led to the complete destruction of the original church. The only remains are those visible from the smaller 2nd church.
Only the ruins the much smaller, 2nd church are visible.
Warring amongst various Native American tribes ultimately led to the Pueblo abandoning its ancient grounds and joining with another tribe in another location. Still later, the railroad and western civ arrived.
All throughout New Mexico one can find Catholic churches of all sizes, mostly small, and now mostly abandoned.
Northern New Mexico begins to resemble Utah with mountains and because of higher rainfalls trees and other richer vegetation.
But where the mountains end, the dry plains extend for countless miles.
The Southwest has many evidences of the Native American peoples, from the presence of vast reservations (Indian territories), to casinos for gambling (see the below picture of one place with very nice biker friendly hotel in an otherwise empty desert area), to numerous roadside shops.
All along Route 66 one encounters other motorcycle riders, sometimes in large packs as below, sometimes solitary, very fit bicycle riders trekking through remote hilly country with no rest stops within any reasonable one-day ride.
For a time I followed 65 Irish national bikers. Every other year they do a charity ride on Route 66. Each rider raises $10K, $7K going to a children’s hospital in Ireland, and the balance to rent very nice, high-end motorcycles in Chicago for their one-way ride on Route 66 to Los Angeles.
One very popular stop is the El Rancho Hotel in Gallup NM. It was built in the 1930s by the brother of DW Griffiths, the movie producer / director who shot many western movies in the area. The hotel was used to house the ‘stars’ and all the actors and support staff for the months of the shoot. The hotel is filled with pictures of those famed individuals and other memorabilia. They, like those in the rustic Santa Rosa cemetery, have gone the way of all others, though rich and famous: ““All flesh is grass, and all its loveliness is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades, because the breath of the Lord blows upon it; surely the people are grass.” (Isaiah 40:6, 7)
After Gallup NM, one has a few scenic miles left in New Mexico, and encounters with wild horses, before entering Arizona. I wonder if their grandparents, or great great grandparents, were movie stars in a DW Griffith’s Western/
Arizona is here: