White Sands National Monument

The White Sands National Monument is half an hour's drive southwest of Alamogordo in the south of New Mexico. It lies in the Tularosa basin, a northern offshoot of the Chihuahua Desert surrounded by hills. Here gleaming white gypsum sand has built up into an extraordinary landscape of dunes up to 60ft/18m high which are constantly being displaced by the wind.
White Sands National Monument Map
Important Information:
Opening hours: May 15 to Aug 15: 8am-7pm
Aug 16 to May 14: 8am-4:30pm
Always closed on: Christmas - Christian (Dec 25)
Entrance fee in USD: $3.00, Child 16 & under FREE
Useful tips: One-year passes available for $20.00. Warning In walking about in the dunes it is easy to lose your sense of direction, particularly if a sandstorm blows up.
Disability Access: Partial facilities for persons with disabilities.
Facilities: Gift shop
Typical Visit: 1 hour
Only highly adapted forms of life can stand up to the extreme conditions of this arid and constantly changing habitat. Some plants, for example, have developed roots over 30ft/10m long in order to gain a foothold in the traveling dunes.
Origins
Some 250 million years ago this area was occupied by a shallow sea on the bottom of which gypsum was deposited. The present hills were created by the upthrusting and folding of marine sediments. A large section of the earth's crust fell in and the Tularosa basin was formed. In the hills round the basin the deposits of gypsum were dissolved by rain, and water with a high gypsum content gathered in the Tularosa basin, which had no outlet, and formed a lake, now known as Lake Lucero. The lake repeatedly dried out and the gypsum crystallized; and finally small grains of gypsum were blown by wind into the remarkable dunes we see today, which are now under protection as a National Monument.

Related Attractions

Dunes Drive

It is possible to drive into the fantastic dune landscape on a road which runs into a gypsum track. In 3mi/5km the Big Dune Nature Trail goes off on the left. The road ends after 8mi/13km in the heart of the dunes. It is a curious experience to climb one of the dunes in the soft sand, which in spite of the heat is cool.
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