Las Cruces, NM Sign Regulations: Freeway-Facing Signs (2026)

Section 36-83 of the sign code sets separate size tiers for billboards based on the road they face. Billboards fronting Interstate 10 or Interstate 25 can reach 400 square feet of total sign area and 40 feet in height measured from ground level. Every other legal billboard location, including Main Street, Picacho Avenue, Amador Avenue, Lohman Avenue west of I-25, Solano Drive, El Paseo Road, Valley Drive, Motel Boulevard south of Picacho, and Telshor Boulevard north of Lohman, tops out at 300 square feet and 30 feet in height, with a minimum 15-foot clearance from ground level to the bottom of the sign face.

All billboards, freeway-facing or not, must be spaced at least 1,000 feet from the next billboard, sit only on land zoned C-2, C-3, M-1/M-2, or M-3, and can only go up along a street segment where at least 75 percent of the frontage is zoned office, commercial, or industrial. A billboard needs a minimum sign area of 72 square feet, can carry no more than two parallel back-to-back faces on a single pole, and cannot be stacked vertically or horizontally with another sign. Setbacks run at least 15 feet from the property line along the qualifying road, though interstate-fronting billboards are not subject to the one-third-of-lot-depth setback cap that applies elsewhere, and every billboard needs at least five feet of clearance from all other property lines.