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 Approved For Release 2001/03/07 : C IA-RDP96-00789 ROO 1300050001 -2
 CPYRGHT
 ew Mexico's Great White Sands' 113
          Feathery Dunes of Snow-white Gypsurn in a 14-0,000-acre "Sandbox"
                   Make This Area Unique Among National Monuments
 BY WILLIAm BELKNAP, JR.
 With Iffitsirations from Photographs by the Juthor
   Y the time you reach White Sands Na-
 tional Monument, near Alamogordo,
                      P
 BNew 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 bands through the in-
 credibly soft stuff, cool and delightful. Off
 come your shoes; the next impulse is to lie
 down and roll.
      It looks and feels like fine sand, but there
 the similarity ends. For these hills of stun-
 nin- white are wind-crumbled - psum.*
 OY
 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 w,-,tch 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 daugh
            ter 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 ma-ic hit Fran and me. Match-
 i
 n
 g our children's abandon, we slipped off our
 hoes and raced up a snowy mound.
      "I had no idea it could be this beautiful,"
 Fran said. "It's like fairvland! "
      See "The White Sands of Alamogordo," by Carl (@)N:@SSTATUTE
 P. Russell, NATIONAL GEOGRAFnIC MAGAMNF, August,
 1935. Approved For Release 2001/03/07
 6
 -2
      We strolled along the roadside dunes, fasci-
 nated by the way desert plants-yuccas,
 sumacs, and even cotton woods-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 bate 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

 

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