- Where
- Tularosa Basin, southern New Mexico
15 miles south-west of Alamogordo - Coordinates
- 32.78° N
106.17° W - Dunefield
- 275 mi² (710 km²) of gypsum
about 42% inside the park - Protected
- National monument 1933
national park 2019 - Getting there
- By car; El Paso airport
about 85 miles - Best visited
- Year-round
- Advisory
- United States
(no State Department level)
The dunes were pale as a laundered sheet and cool under my bare feet in the heat of the afternoon, which my feet refused to believe. Families slid down them on plastic saucers. A spiky plant stood on a pillar of packed grains where its dune had wandered off and left it. Earlier a gate had kept us waiting while something far away was tested. Nobody said what.
The short answer
White Sands National Park lies in the Tularosa Basin of southern New Mexico, about 15 miles (24 km) south-west of Alamogordo and 52 miles (84 km) north-east of Las Cruces, on the north side of U.S. Route 70. Its subject is a field of dunes made of gypsum crystals: 275 square miles (710 km²) of them, about 42 per cent inside the park and the rest to the north on White Sands Missile Range, with about 4.5 billion short tons of gypsum sand, dunes up to about 60 feet (18 m) high and an average depth of about 30 feet below the hollows between them, Wikipedia records. The Park Service and Wikipedia both call it the largest gypsum dunefield on Earth. President Herbert Hoover made it a national monument on 18 January 1933; Congress made it a national park, signed into law on 20 December 2019. It is the most visited Park Service site in New Mexico, with about 600,000 visitors a year.
Why it's worth knowing
A mineral that should not be a dune. Gypsum dissolves in water, so it rarely survives as sand: rain carries it away. The Tularosa Basin is a closed basin with no outlet to the sea, so what the rain washes out of the San Andres and Sacramento mountains, which hold gypsum from Permian seas, stays in the basin. When a vast Ice Age lake, Lake Otero, dried out, it left a flat of selenite crystals, the Alkali Flat; Lake Lucero, at the park’s south-west corner, still fills after heavy rain and grows new crystals as it dries. Wind breaks the crystals into grains and drives them north-east as dunes, which formed about 7,000 to 10,000 years ago and are still moving, fastest at the western edge, Wikipedia records.
A park inside a missile range. The basin has been military land since 1941, when the Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range was set up; it is now White Sands Missile Range, which Wikipedia calls the largest military installation in the United States, at almost 3,200 square miles. The world’s first nuclear weapon test, Trinity, was set off at its northern end on 16 July 1945. The national park sits wholly inside it. When a test is scheduled, the Park Service closes Dunes Drive, the only road into the dunes, for up to three hours, and U.S. 70 between Alamogordo and Las Cruces may close too; notice can come as little as 24 hours ahead. The visitor centre stays open during closures (Park Service, read 7 October 2026). Errant missiles have fallen inside the park over the years, Wikipedia’s history records.
Footprints from the last Ice Age. On a playa in the park, researchers found human footprints in layers of ancient lake mud, between layers holding seeds of a ditch grass, Ruppia cirrhosa. In 2021 a team led by Matthew Bennett reported in Science radiocarbon ages for those seeds of about 22,860 and 21,130 years, which would put people in North America thousands of years before the arrival date most researchers then accepted, about 13,000 to 16,000 years ago. Other scientists doubted the dates: Charles Oviatt, David Madsen, David Rhode and Loren Davis argued in Quaternary Research in January 2023 that an aquatic plant can take up old carbon from the water and so read too old. Later in 2023 a team led by Jeffrey Pigati reported in Science ages from conifer pollen and from quartz grains (by optically stimulated luminescence) that agreed with the first, and titled their paper as resolving the controversy. The footprints themselves are not open to visitors; the visitor centre has had an exhibit with casts since January 2024 (Park Service).
The field notes
Cool underfoot
Satellite images show the dunefield as cooler and wetter than the desert soils around it, Wikipedia records: the water table lies only a metre or two beneath the dunes, nearest the surface in the west. That is one reason the sand can feel cool on a hot day. The air is another matter. The Park Service gives average summer highs of about 97 °F (36 °C), and winter nights that drop into the low 20s °F (below −5 °C); it records that people have died in the park of heat illness, hypothermia, dehydration and getting lost.
Pale animals
Several animals of the dunes are white or nearly white, among them the bleached earless lizard and the little white whiptail, a lizard that sheds its tail to escape. At least 45 species are found only in the park, 40 of them moths, and the White Sands pupfish is the only fish in the park and the only fish endemic to the basin, Wikipedia records.
The plaster walls of Tularosa
When Hispanic families farmed Tularosa from 1861 and La Luz from 1863, they mixed water with gypsum sand from the dunes to plaster their adobe walls, white against the summer sun, Wikipedia records. Earlier still, Archaic peoples’ hearths in the dunes were cemented in place by the same chemistry: heated gypsum turns to plaster, which hardens when it gets wet and dries. In 1907 a plaster-of-Paris works drilled shafts into the dunes and cooked the gypsum at night; the national monument closed it.
A dune's slip face, with sand blowing off the far crests.
Photograph: Michael C. Rygel · White Sands Dune with Wind Ripples · CC BY-SA 3.0 · cropped
Fossil human footprints in the gypsum, exposed for study.
Photograph: National Park Service · Public domain (PD-USGov, US National Park Service) · cropped
The dunefield from orbit, with the range roads cutting across it.
Satellite image: NASA Earth Observatory, Jesse Allen · Public domain (NASA)
A dune crest at evening.
Photograph: Krzysztof Ziarnek, Kenraiz · CC BY-SA 4.0
- Come at first light or towards sunset, and leave the noon glare to the lizards.
- If the gate is shut for a test, wait for it in good humour. (I rewrote the list while we waited. It came out longer.)
- Take water, more than feels reasonable, and follow the posts. When you cannot see the next one, turn round.
- Find a gentle slope with a level run-out, sit on the saucer feet first, and shout if you like. Everybody does.
- Leave every grain behind. Brush off your shoes before the car, and your pockets too.
A selenite crystal. On the Alkali Flat and along the shore of Lake Lucero, at the far western side of the dunefield, the ground is strewn with crystals of selenite, the clear crystalline form of gypsum, some up to about 3 feet (0.9 m) long, Wikipedia records. Each flood that fills Lake Lucero and dries away leaves new ones about an inch across on the lakebed. Wind and water break them down, step by step, into the fine grains that the prevailing south-west wind carries off to build the dunes. The flats lie in a part of the park reached only on a ranger-led tour.
Tally, in the marginA windowpane somebody had left lying about, and then a whole floor of them, catching the sun in every direction at once. I picked my way across on tiptoe, as if the house they belonged to might wake.
Getting there
How to get there. By car. The park entrance is on U.S. 70, about 15 miles south-west of Alamogordo and 52 miles north-east of Las Cruces; the nearest commercial airport is El Paso, Texas, about 85 miles away, Wikipedia records. From the visitor centre, Dunes Drive runs 8 miles into the dunes, the first half paved and the rest packed gypsum, with picnic areas, five marked trails and sledding slopes along it. There is nowhere to sleep in the park: the nearest food and beds are in Alamogordo, and backcountry camping is closed (Park Service, read 7 October 2026). Entrance passes are sold per vehicle, from $15 to $25 for a standard pass, and children aged 15 and under enter free.
When to go. The park is open every day of the year except Thanksgiving and Christmas Day, with hours that change through the year. Spring and autumn are mildest; summer afternoons are hot, most rain falls from July to mid-October, and winter nights freeze. Ranger-led sunset strolls run every evening, and Lake Lucero tours, which reach the crystal flats, once a month from November to April, Wikipedia records.
What to arrange ahead. Check the Park Service’s military-testing page the day before: on 7 October 2026 it listed one closure, on 15 October 2026 from 7 to 9 a.m., with U.S. 70 blocked too. Book a Lake Lucero tour ahead if you want one. Carry water, at least a gallon (4 litres) a person a day: the visitor centre has the only water in the park.
Safety. The State Department’s travel advisories cover other countries, so none applies here; the hazards are the park’s own. The Park Service warns of heat, cold at night, disorientation among the dunes (follow the trail posts, and turn back if you cannot see the next), sledding injuries at the hard foot of a dune, and venomous snakes, scorpions and unexploded ordnance hidden in the sand. Between miles 3 and 5.5 of Dunes Drive a safety corridor is in place until further notice, in which stopping, parking and leaving your vehicle are prohibited. Taking sand, or any natural object, out of the park is a federal offence, the Park Service notes.
Mark this place
Common questions
Where is White Sands National Park?
White Sands National Park is in the Tularosa Basin of southern New Mexico, about 15 miles south-west of Alamogordo and 52 miles north-east of Las Cruces, on U.S. Route 70. The nearest commercial airport is El Paso, Texas, about 85 miles away.
Why is the sand at White Sands white?
The dunes of White Sands are made of gypsum, a soft, pale mineral, not the quartz of most dunes. Rain washes gypsum out of the San Andres and Sacramento mountains into the closed Tularosa Basin, where drying lakes leave selenite crystals that the wind breaks into fine white grains.
Is White Sands the largest gypsum dunefield in the world?
Yes. The National Park Service calls White Sands the largest gypsum dunefield on Earth: about 275 square miles (710 km²) of dunes in New Mexico’s Tularosa Basin, about 42 per cent of them inside White Sands National Park and the rest on White Sands Missile Range.
Why does White Sands National Park close for missile tests?
White Sands National Park lies entirely inside White Sands Missile Range. When a test is scheduled, the National Park Service closes Dunes Drive, the only road into the dunes, for up to three hours, and U.S. 70 may close as well; notice can come as little as 24 hours ahead. The visitor centre stays open.
How old are the footprints at White Sands?
Human footprints found at White Sands National Park were dated to about 21,000 to 23,000 years ago in a 2021 study in Science, from seeds in the layers around them. Critics questioned those seed dates in 2023, and a second study in Science the same year reported matching ages from pollen and quartz grains.
Can you take sand home from White Sands?
No. The National Park Service says federal regulations prohibit taking sand or any other natural resource from White Sands National Park, and that doing so is a Class B misdemeanour punishable by a fine of up to $5,000 or six months in jail.
Can you go sledding at White Sands?
Yes. Sledding on the gypsum dunes is allowed across most of White Sands National Park, though not around the interdune boardwalk. The Park Service recommends waxed plastic snow saucers, sold or rented at the park shop, feet first, on a gentle slope with a level run-out.
Is White Sands hot in summer?
Yes. The National Park Service gives average summer highs at White Sands of about 97 °F (36 °C), and winter nights fall into the low 20s °F. It advises carrying at least a gallon (4 litres) of water a person a day; water is available only at the visitor centre.