White Sands National Park

White Sands National Park is a national park of the United States located in New Mexico and completely surrounded by White Sands Missile Range. The park covers 145,762 acres (227.8 sq mi, 589.9 km2) in the Tularosa Basin, including the southern 41% of a 275 mi2 (710 km2) field of white sand dunes composed of gypsum crystals. This gypsum dunefield is the largest of its kind on Earth, with a depth of about 30 feet (9.1 m), dunes as tall as 60 feet (18 m), and about 4.5 billion short tons (4.1 billion metric tons) of gypsum sand. Approximately 12,000 years ago, the land within the Tularosa Basin featured large lakes, streams, grasslands, and Ice Age mammals. As the climate warmed, rain and snowmelt dissolved gypsum from the surrounding mountains and carried it into the basin. Further warming and drying caused the lakes to evaporate and form selenite crystals. Strong winds then broke up crystals and transported them eastward. A similar process continues to produce gypsum sand today. Thousands of species of animals inhabit the park, a large portion of which are invertebrates. Several animal species feature a white or off-white coloration. At least 45 species are endemic, living only in this park, with 40 of them being moth species. The Tularosa Basin has also seen a number of human inhabitants, from Paleo-Indians tens of millennia ago to modern farmers, ranchers, and miners. White S

Park data from Wikidata (CC0). Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).