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f CPYRGHT Approved For Release 2001/03/07 : CIA-RDP96-00789R001300050001-2 New Mexico’s Great White Sands 113 Feathery Dunes of Snow-white Gypsum in a 140,000-acre “Sandbox” Make This Area Unique Among National Monuments By Wiri1amM BELKnap, Jr. With Illustrations from Photographs by the Author tional Monument, near Alamogordo, New Mexico, you’re used to mirages. So the porcelain streak you see among the heat waves simply can’t be real. You still don’t believe it when you start up the eight-mile White Sands Drive. You stop where the road touches the first dune and run your hands through the in- credibly soft stuff, cool and delightful. Off come your shoes; the next impulse is to He down and roll, It looks and feels like fine sand, but there the similarity ends. For these hills of stun- ning white are wind-crumbled gypsum.* B the time you reach White Sands Na- Dunes Cast a Strange Spell Enchantment, disbelief, puzzlement—these are typical reactions among startled visitors to White Sands. Many, like my own family, come with little more than an inkling of the Scenic surprises in store. When we turned off U. S, Highway 70 at the Monument Visitor Center, the country looked flat and unpromising. I began to wonder what there would be to photograph. Fran, my wife, rolled down her window and accepted our car permit from a ranger. “Stay on the roads, folks, and watch our speed limits,” he said cheerfully. “Have fun!” As we drove along White Sands Drive, my disappointment quickly faded. Shimmering dunes, fresh as a wilderness snowfall, loomed ahead. Our son Buzz, 12, and daughter Loie, 10, called a halt when we reached the first drifts and shot from the car as if spring- ejected. They scampered up a near-by slope, dropped to their knees, and scooped up great handfuls. Then the magic hit Fran and me. Match- ing our children’s abandon, we slipped off our shoes and raced up a snowy mound. “T had no idea it could be this beautiful,” ” Fran said. “It’s like fairyland!” *See “The White Sands of Alamogorda,” by Carl P. Russell, Nationa, Grocrapic Macazine, August, We strolled along the roadside dunes, fasci- nated by the way desert plants—yuccas, sumacs, and even cottonwoods-—managed to keep their heads above the sugary tide, Here and there we found grotesque mounds held to- gether by close-knit root systems (pages 126 and 127). “Don’t look back,” I said to Fran as we headed for the car. ‘Remember the Bible story about Lot’s wife? I’d hate to leave you here as a pillar of gypsum!” Like three million visitors before us, we began to appreciate White Sands’ uniqueness. Later, at the museum, we learned it is the world’s largest known surface deposit of gypsum sand. Utah and Australia have some, but neither deposit rivals New Mexico’s 275-square-mile display. Dunes at White Sands are not only the largest in area; they move faster, pile steeper, look whiter, and are just plain more fun than any others. Dizzy statistics? There is enough white SS U miles to Trinity Site, . 1. # Yescalerd ¢ ES gt atomic! bomb test a. pache : . @ = . . <A india Tularosa i) Holloman Air ras) oa . NE Heart of eM = White yea al ‘or Cent vs i) National me NO” al abe MILES af 7 hay AP ERE ONGS8 fen? OS 185. Approved For Release 2001/03/07 : CIA- gD epics sa 224 WwW
° Approved For Release 2001/03/07 : CIA-RDP96-00789R001300050004-2 CPYRGHT @® National Geographic Suclety rain nd me OBE Steel PARR ETERS AOU OROT CIA-RDRE;00/B8R00 1390050001- The solution mixes with gypsum-bearing ground water from beds beneath the valley floor.