Paul & Tara Visit the National Parks: White Sands National Monument

Visited: Feb 2017

Nearby city: Alamogordo, NM

In south-central New Mexico, you will find the largest gypsum dune field on Earth. These otherworldly dunes are quite striking and beautiful.

During the last Ice Age, the ancient Lake Otero covered much of this area, which is now the Tularosa Basin. As Lake Otero dried up, the selenite (gypsum in crystalline form) remained. Years and years of weathering and erosion, has worn the gypsum crystals down into fine sand, and the prevailing winds from the southwest have formed these spectacular dunes. To this day there are still some seasonal lakes in the park, the largest of which is Lake Lucero.

White Sands became a National Monument in 1933. During WWII, the military used this bleak, isolated area of the Tularosa Basin for training installations and missile testing (including the first atomic bomb test). Today, the monument is entirely surrounded by the White Sands Missile Range and the Holloman Air Force Base. There has always been an uneasy relationship between Park officials and the military installations. Because of this, attempts to designate White Sands as a National Park have usually been thwarted, out of fear that National Park status would disrupt the nearby military installations.

White Sands National Monument can easily be visited in a 1/2 of a day, and is a great stop. Just be aware, that missile testing can cause the park to close (usually an hour to two hours) at any time. So, just be prepared for that possibility. Visitors can take the Dunes Drive, to go into the park and take short nature hikes to experience the dunes, or take the five-mile loop trail, the Alkali Flat Trail.

The gypsum minerals have created these brilliant white-colored dunes. Unlike most dunes which are quartz-based sand crystals, the gypsum dunes do not readily convert the sun's energy into heat and therefore can be walked upon with bare feet, even in the middle of the day during the summer. It was fun to walk around bare feet on the cool, soft sand. It was almost like we were at the beach.