Madrid, owner of the Santa Fe Trading Company, a store specializing in Native American merchandise, said he has yet to notice the affect of the economic downturn on his business.

He admitted it was hard to tell, since his business has only been open one year, and he had only recently switched to being open on weekdays as well as weekends.

‘‘We have an edge in New Market,” he said. ‘‘All of our shops are unique ... Indian stuff isn’t available anywhere else locally.”

Despite the optimism of some New Market business owners, others say high gas prices and a dwindling housing market are taking their toll on the small town’s economy.

‘‘Over the past few months, several of us have noticed a downturn,” said David Price, owner of 12 West Main, an art gallery in New Market. The usually optimistic Price was a circumspect about the national economy, which he said was showing its effects on the community.

‘‘We’re not going to get rich in this day and age,” he said.

Price did say he believed the community was benefiting in some ways from higher gas prices. He said he had noticed that the town was getting more traffic from regional residents.

‘‘With us being a day trip from Baltimore and D.C., we’re benefitting from the downturn,” Price said. ‘‘People are looking for more things to do closer to home.”

He has noticed customers tend to think about their purchases more carefully, and buy fewer items. ‘‘They’re spending 30 minutes buying two or three very well thought-out purchases,” Price said.

Karen Travers, owner of New Market General Store, has noticed a slowdown in business, and linked this to a declining housing market.

‘‘One thing I don’t have is high expectations,” she said. Travers’ husband is a homebuilder, and she said this gave her a unique perspective on the relationship between the housing market and the economy. ‘‘If you’re not hiring a carpenter [to work on a house], that affects his family,” she said.

Travers said she is trying to be realistic about the economic downturn, and she and other business owners were trying different plans to boost the local economy.

Special events such as New Market Days and ‘‘Save the Locals,” held earlier in April, help to bring people into town, she said. In the meantime, Travers said she is stocking fewer, more unique items to sell in her store, as a cautionary measure.

The Downtown New Market Partnership, a group that promotes tourism in the town’s historic district, sponsored Save the Locals on April 12 and 13. Price said its purpose was to introduce visitors to the business owners in town and show that they were not corporate business people, but local homeowners.

Rick Fleshman, owner of Fleshman’s Antiques and president of the New Market Antique Dealers’ Association, said the main effect the economy has had on him is that he tends to combine trips now. He cited a recent example in which a trip to the bank became a trip to the grocery store, cleaner and other errands.

‘‘You’ve got to put six or eight things together to make it work,” Fleshman said. ‘‘It’s the worst economy in 30 years.”

Giving some historic perspective, Fleshman said the town would most likely survive the latest economic slump. ‘‘It’s been here for 200 years,” he said.