Push renewed to elevate White Sands to national park status

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — The push to elevate a vast expanse of shifting white sand dunes in New Mexico to national park status was renewed recently as members of the state’s congressional delegation reintroduced legislation aimed at boosting the profile of the already popular tourist destination.

“Like no place on earth” is how the National Park Service describes the world’s largest gypsum dune field.

The monument sees hundreds of thousands of visitors every year, more than any other park service location in New Mexico.

The federal legislation, first introduced last year, comes as New Mexico formalizes its effort to join other Western states in tapping into the lucrative outdoor recreation industry. Acknowledging competition from neighboring Colorado, Arizona and Utah, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham has said that New Mexico has just as much natural beauty.

The legislation includes provisions for a land exchange between White Sands and the U.S. Army, which operates an adjacent missile range.

Efforts to establish a national park in the area go back more than a century as some locals wanted to protect the dunes from commercial interests that were attempting to mine the gypsum. They argued the dunes could be profitable in other ways.

It took three decades before White Sands was established as a monument in 1933.

The monument has the largest collection of fossilized tracks in gypsum in the world, from sabertoothed cats and woolly mammoths to ancient camels. Thousands of hearth sites where early inhabitants built campfires also have been preserved in the dunes in ways not found elsewhere.

SUSAN MONTOYA BRYAN/AP White Sands National Monument near Alamogordo, N.M., is the world’s largest gypsum dune field.