Salt Desert in New Mexico.
South-central New Mexico is home to the San Andres Mountains and the most immense white sands desert in the world. The white sands are located in North America’s largest desert called the Chihuahaun Desert. It is the least known of the big four U.S. deserts because more than 80 percent of it occurs in Mexico.
Summers are hot with daytime temperatures exceeding 100 degrees and winters are cold with freezing temperatures some nights. The dunes of White Sands Monument are unique, in fact they make up the largest gypsum sand dunes on the planet. Most of the world’s sand is made up of quartz. Gypsum is rarely found in the form of sand because it is water-soluble. Normally, rain would dissolve the gypsum and carry it to the sea. The Tularosa Basin is enclosed, meaning that it has no outlet to the sea and that rain that dissolves gypsum from the surrounding San Andres and Sacramento Mountains is trapped within the basin. Thus water either sinks into the ground or forms shallow pools which subsequently dry out and leave gypsum in a crystalline form, called selenite, on the surface. Also unlike dunes made of quartz-based sand crystals, the gypsum does not readily convert the sun’s energy into heat and thus can be walked upon safely with bare feet, even in the hottest summer months.
Far from being void of plants and animals White Sands is brimming with life. Soaptree yuccas cope with shifting dunes by growing higher . There are also 76 animal species and over 100 families of insects here. Some of them rely on camouflage, or more specifically white coloration, in order to live here. The Cowles prairie lizard is normally black but it would stick out in a white desert, so it adapted and became white. Cowles spadefoot toads and camel crickets have also specially adapted with white coloration.
Because the park lies completely within the White Sands Missile Range, both the park and U.S. Route 70 between Las Cruces, New Mexico and Alamogordo are subject to closure for safety reasons when tests are conducted on the missile range. On average, tests occur about twice a week, for a duration of one to two hours. Located on the northernmost boundaries of White Sands Missile Range, the Trinity Site can be found, where the first atom bomb was detonated.
