White Sands National Park

White Sands National Park protects the largest gypsum dunefield on Earth, roughly two hundred seventy square miles of blinding white sand in the Tularosa Basin north of Las Cruces. Gypsum is one of the few minerals soft enough to be picked up by desert wind, and here it accumulates to dunes sixty feet tall that shift position by up to thirty feet per year. The white surface reflects heat rather than absorbing it, so the dunes stay remarkably cool underfoot even in summer, a surreal quality that makes the place feel like a different planet.

The basin has no drainage to the sea. Water flows in from surrounding mountains during the monsoon season and collects in Lake Lucero to the southwest, where it evaporates and leaves gypsum crystals behind. Wind does the rest. The park became a National Monument in nineteen thirty-three under President Hoover and was elevated to National Park status in twenty nineteen.