A desert that looks like fresh snow
White Sands is an enormous gypsum landscape, shaped grain by grain by water and wind.
From a distance, the dunes of White Sands can look like snowdrifts. Their pale color comes from gypsum, the mineral that makes up this remarkable desert in southern New Mexico’s Tularosa Basin.
The entire dunefield stretches across about 275 square miles, making it the largest gypsum dunefield on Earth. White Sands National Park protects part of that landscape. Water transported dissolved gypsum into lakes; evaporation left crystals that eventually broke down into sand.
Wind continues to move the dunes, reshaping the view over time. This National Park Service archive photograph shows undulating dunes with the San Andres Mountains beyond. It is a view of a changing landscape, rather than a scene frozen in place.
Story context and image credits
Original Instagram publication October 7, 2026 at 19:56:52 UTC; 8-image carousel. Website article reviewed and published October 13, 2026. NPS archive photographs; individual capture dates are not asserted.
View the full photo-credit recordView the original Instagram publicationSources & notes
- NPS photo record: Dunes and mountains at sunrisenpgallery.nps.gov
- NPS photo record: Vast, undulating waves of white (website hero)npgallery.nps.gov
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