White Sands National Park

White Sands lies in the Tularosa Basin between Alamogordo and Las Cruces, and nearly everything around it belongs to the military: White Sands Missile Range to the north and west, Holloman Air Force Base to the east, Fort Bliss beyond. The dunes themselves run on north into the missile range past the park boundary. When the range fires test missiles, US-70 and the park road are closed, usually for one to three hours, about once or twice a week, and the park asks visitors to check the closure schedule the day before.

The park has one road. Dunes Drive runs eight miles from the visitor center on US-70 into the heart of the dunes. The first stretch is paved; the rest is packed gypsum, graded and plowed because the dunes keep moving, twenty or thirty feet a year in places, and the loop at its far end is a series of cleared lots that shift with them.

Visitors sled down the steep faces on plastic saucers, sold at the visitor center. The Alkali Flat Trail, about five miles round trip across trackless dunes and marked only by posts, leads to the dry lakebed that feeds the dunefield. It has no shade and no water, and hikers have died on it in the summer heat; carry far more water than seems necessary.

White Sands was made a national monument in 1933 and a national park in December 2019. Dunes Drive closes around sunset.