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Shimmering white dunes, shaped and contoured by the wind into smoothly rounded crescents, stretch endlessly before the eyes of wanderers in the White Sands. But this is unusual sand – not the usual quartz, but gypsum. White Sands is the world’s most impressive gypsum desert, about 300sq miles (780km2) in extent; it lies in the flat-floored Tularosa Valley in New Mexico, and much of it has been a US National Monument since 1933. No one ever exploited its gypsum; the area was too remote and gypsum was plentiful elsewhere. Gypsum is a white mineral used in cement and plater manufacture, and massive layers of gypsum rock exist in the mountains that surround White Sands. Centuries of erosion by gravity, rain and melting snow have carried rock debris down to Lake Lucero, the lowest part of the basin, where it mixes with water that seeps up from the valley floor. Sun and wind evaporate the water to leave a dry bed of coarse encrusted gypsum that is ground by wind into fine particles. These are blown into dunes that can grow 100ft (30m) high. Slowly the wind shifts the dunes and they migrate north-east, sometimes at a rate of about 20ft (6m) a year. This arid, dazzling landscape below a wide, blue sky and relentless sun evokes the Old West – the Rio Grande is not far away. Mescalero Apaches came here to gather on the alkali flats, and there are still plaster casts of their campfires – the heated gypsum formed plaster of Paris, which was set by rain. Silver City, west of the San Andres Mountains, was the birthplace in 1859 of William H. Bonney, better known as Billy the Kid. Some plants succeed in scratching sustenance from this shifting wilderness. Cottonwood trees thrust defiantly skywards, sometimes with just their heads above a dune. When the dune moves on, they may be left encased in a plaster cast. Similarly, skunkbush (lovely name right?) sumacs sit on stools of hardened gypsum. Soaptree yuccas survive by pushing snake-like stems through the dunes. Their creamy, bell-shaped flowers, known as ‘Candle of the Lord’, are New Mexico’s State flower. Native Americans ate the shoots and flowers made porridge from their seeds. Few large animals venture into the white desert – it offers little food and no shelter from the killing midday heat. Sands pocket gophers thrive because they burrow into the sand away from the heat and Apache pocket mice also shelter in these gopher burrows. Along with three kinds of lizard – particularly the bleached earless lizard – these pocket mice have developed bleached white colouring that camouflages them from predators such as owls and hawks. Unlike the Westerners of old, who braved the heat and the sandstorms on foot or horseback, modern visitors to White Sands can drive through the area along a signposted route. Sandstorms sometimes slow traffic, and drifting dunes may bury the road. ~ JM Image Credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:White_Sands_National_Monument_-_New_Mexico_-_dawn_in_the_desert_-_(17480401603).jpg More Info: https://www.nps.gov/whsa/index.htm National Park Service, White Sands: We have wrote about this before - see here at http://on.fb.me/1GSVJA7