White Sands National Monument, Alamogordo, New Mexico, USA
It is impossible not to be struck by the starkness and grandeur of White Sands National Monument. Wave-like dunes of pure white gypsum sand engulf 275 square miles of New Mexico’s Tularosa Basin, creating one of the world’s most impressive natural wonders. White Sands was established as a national monument in 1933, but its history goes back much further.
President Herbert Hoover signed White Sands National Monument into the National Parks System on Jan. 18, 1933, under the authority of the Antiquities Act of 1906. The landscape had already been home to the Mescalero Apache for generations, but they were not the first residents. The earliest human inhabitants arrived about 10,000 years ago, hunting mammoth and bison in what was then a lush grassland along the shores of ancient Lake Otero.
White Sands National Monument is a U.S. National Monument located in the state of New Mexico on the north side of Route 70 about 16 miles southwest of Alamogordo in western Otero County and northeastern Doña Ana County. The monument is situated at an elevation of 4,235 feet in the mountain-ringed Tularosa Basin and comprises the southern part of a 275 sq mi field of white sand dunes composed of gypsum crystals. The gypsum dune field is the largest of its kind in the world.
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