Let's welcome our newest National Park: White Sands!

[DemoTex]

White Sands National Park
Tularosa Basin - Chihuahuan Desert
New Mexico

[jberryhill]

1. Why did they name it that?

[LastDemocratInSC]

6. I see what you did there 😀

[Martin Eden]

19. The IMPotus

Is a White Nationalist.

[jberryhill]

20. Bravo!

[IronLionZion]

22. All Sand Matters!

[jberryhill]

24. Why can't we have a park that looks like this...

It figures that Trump would have a park for white sand and make the colored sand go somewhere else.

[IronLionZion]

25. Privileges and protections only for white sand

while other colors of sand are opened up to drilling and mining. Typical Trump

[jberryhill]

27. Yep. Would never happen to Punahuu Beach

[madinmaryland]

39. All the more sand for Tulsi Gabbard to pound. nt.

[hatrack]

2. It was part of the Defense Authorization Bill . .

Can't see Shitstain signing off on this unless it were hidden in a giant appropriations bill (as it was).

Anyway, cool!

[Stuart G]

3. k & R no text.

[Mersky]

4. Good! Is a remarkable place.

Would like to go back for a sparkly visit during a full moon.

[BadgerMom]

5. K R

[llmart]

7. That is a gorgeous picture.

If I actually had a bucket list, visiting all the major national parks would be on it. I've been to several and I'm never disappointed.

Thank you for this calming picture.

[burrowowl]

8. About time

[rokar]

9. Wonderful place

I grew up in El Paso. Been there many times. It is an amazing place and it's about time it became a national park.

[MrModerate]

10. I used to visit from the missile range side, which I could access from Holloman Air Force Base

Very interesting stuff on that side, including Trinity Site.

[not fooled]

11. Must not have

any extractable fossil fuels or minerals. That's the only way the orange turd would go along.

Congratulations and it should be safe.

[womanofthehills]

44. They can't extract there because it's surrounded by a very active missile range

That's why he is going along.

[onethatcares]

12. saw that while visiting my son in

Alamagordo (?).

Had a roadside lunch and then took the walking path tour. During the self sponsored tour the lunch reacted negatively and if you look behind the 4th dune to the left you will see, nah, scratch that.

One thing for sure though. There were no other people within a mile when we stopped due to nature calling. Within 5 minutes the ranger came by on foot to ask how things were going. I wonder if I was on camera.

[pamela]

13. I try to visit several times a year.

White Sands is my happy place.

[panader0]

14. I wanted to visit last year about this time and it was closed

due to the government shutdown. State parks were still open and we settled for City of Rocks, N.M., before heading in to Silver City for food and drinks.
City of Rocks is pretty cool too.
Great photo DemoTex. When will you publish a book of your pics?

[Hekate]

16. I keep asking him that. I'd pay for a coffee-table book or two: one of the fire-lookout photos...

...and another now he's branched out. DemoTex takes me places I'll never get to see otherwise.

Well, I can dream.

[dlk]

15. Beautiful!

Thanks for sharing the photo

[aggiesal]

17. I attended NMSU in the early 80's ...

Visited White Sands plenty and took visitors there to show it off
Took panelling to go “sledding” down the sands like a winters snow.

Also had the chance to see Space Shuttle Columbia land there.
Growing up in Indiana and watching the Mercury & Apollo landings
thousands of miles away in the south pacific, on TV, my mom said
the Space Shuttle is landing in our backyard, we’re going. So she
loaded the station wagon with us 6 kids and I drove us out to
the landing site.
Never forget that.

[Quixote1818]

26. My Dad taught Chemistry at NMSU in the 80s

Dr. Richardson. Maybe you had him?

[aggiesal]

34. I took chemistry, but I don't remember the professor's name. n/t

[captain queeg]

51. That's what I remember, the shuttle landing

We waited around for it when we were passing by. But sometimes they had to tweak the schedule based on weather so we ended up missing it.

[aggiesal]

53. You're not wrong ...

The day it was schedule to land, the wind were too strong so they delayed it for a
day.
The next day, the winds were predicted to get strong again, so the risk was high that it
might not land and rescheduled to land at Cape Canaveral.
But the Cape was not capable of handling a landing, so the minute sunrise occurred, while the winds were still light, they brought the shuttle down on White Sands.
It’s the only landing where the nose tried to lift up while rolling down the runway that captain Jack Lousma had to take manual control and push the nose back down.

We drove out there, both days.

[calimary]

18. What a nice Christmas! Impeachment and a new national park!

I’m happy!

[pecosbob]

21. I love that area...they used to call it Jornada del Muerto

on the Camino Real de Tierra Adentro.

[yellowdogintexas]

23. So happy this site has been elevated to National Park Status

We visited it many years ago as an afterthought to visiting Carlsbad. We realized we could go over through Cloudcroft and catch White Sands on the same trip. That night a huge storm blew through the area - really scary winds. We stopped at the observatory on the top of the ridge and looked down on the valley through the coin operated viewers. It looked like a blizzard was going on down there.

It was the gypsum blowing around. Our waitress at lunch told us her parents had a foot of it piled up on their front porch in Tularosa.

Definitely take something to slide on.

[snowybirdie]

28. Wasn't that land

used for weapons testing in the 50s? Possibly nuclear tests? Is it safe?

[jberryhill]

30. You sound like that guy on the cruise

...who kept saying, “Do you think we ought to book that trip to what the brochure bills as ‘the world’s most active volcano?’”

By the time we go to the Bikini Atoll port of call, he was really getting on my nerves.

In Delaware, we replenish the beaches by pumping in sand from an old offshore munitions dump. They come up with artillery shells, mines, all kinds of neat stuff.

Get out of the bubble and live a little for a change.

[snowybirdie]

31. Sorry to have offended you

But I genuinely remember a White Sands Proving Ground back in the day. Was asking a question. BTW....Have traveled extensively in my life and don't know what bubble you speak of.

[jberryhill]

32. I have a confession to make

I have not actually been on a cruise that took me to a volcano followed by a contaminated nuclear site. This was a fiction for humorous purposes.

[Blue_true]

35. There is a military missile range next door.

White Sands was not used, but the missile range was. Part of the legistlation will have the two exchange some land that is better suited for their purposes (White Sands now being a full fledged national park that can grow on the 900,000 plus visitors that came this year to date).

White Sands has some of the oldest known dinasaurs footprints, so I am sure people won't be able to go there and run amuck with the big ATVs.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

36. do we get to take home a souvenir bucket of sand?

[Blue_true]

40. You will have to ask the park rangers that question. But just imagine if everyone

took home a bucket of sand.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

45. that was the (tongue-in-cheek) point

Ask Hawaiians how they feel about tourists taking souvenir chunks of volcanic rock.

[Blue_true]

46. Tongue in cheek. So say they all. nt

[jberryhill]

48. Then everyone would have a bucket of sand!

So far, so good.

Might save a lot of lives if they use it for grease fires, traction on icy steps, and it can serve as an ashtray in the meantime.

They shouldn’t let people take it, though.

They should sell it in the gift shop instead!

[Blue_true]

49. Since the sand is an exhaustible resource, it will all be gone if people take it or

buy it as a gift. That logic is why I am hesitant to use a natural resource that was formed millions or billions of years ago, once it is gone, it is gone for a while or forever. Fossil fuels are a special class, they will kill us and our biomass will replenish them.

[jberryhill]

50. Did you know plastic dinosaurs are made of dinosaurs?

[Blue_true]

54. Yes. Most plastic comes from a petroleum fraction.

I say most because there are some plastics that are being made from plant oils and residues, but their quality varies, so don't expect to see them making up grocery bags soon. If a way could be found to make inexpensive carbon nanofibers, that dynamic could change big, the problem is that existing processes for making Carbon nanofibers are somewhat cludgy, and what is made is really expensive to use. Carbon nanofibers are really interesting because of the range of potential uses, plus they can be made from CO2, CO or Methane, problem greenhouse gases currently.

[womanofthehills]

43. No way can you take sand - breaking a Federal law

Last edited Tue Dec 24, 2019, 10:38 PM - Edit history (1)

FILE - In this Feb. 8, 2019 photo file, shows the gypsum sand dunes at White Sands National Monument near Alamogordo, N.M. The New Mexico group Cowboys for Trump is facing criticism after a member bragged the group brought iconic gypsum sands from the White Sands National Monument to Washington for a Christmas Tree lighting ceremony on Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2019, in a possible violation of federal law. (AP Photo/Susan Montoya Bryan, File)

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — Iconic gypsum sand that the group Cowboys for Trump had said was from White Sands National Monument in New Mexico and was sent to Washington for the U.S. Capitol Tree lighting ceremony this week was actually gathered just outside the monument, one of the group’s co-founders said Friday.

The group had caused a political furor after announcing it sent the sand because it’s illegal to remove sand from the park — and Democrats said the group might have violated federal law.

But Otero County Commission Chairman and Cowboys for Trump co-founder Couy Griffin told The Associated Press the group collected its four “big plastic bins” of extremely fine, pure white sand from outside the monument’s perimeter for delivery to Wednesday’s tree lighting ceremony after getting permission from the New Mexico Department of Transportation.

https://apnews.com/e4c1906cc48899a6e821ece9b2c414aa

[LeftInTX]

33. It's been a hangout for quite awhile

The missile range and the park are separated. I don't know how much nuclear contamination there was. It seems like most of the proving ground moved to Bikini and Nevada after WWII.

I think there was only one test before the bombs were dropped in Japan.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Sands_Missile_Range

[womanofthehills]

41. White Sands Missle Range is still doing big time missle/anti missle testing plus....

The Army is doing integrated air and missile defense (AIAMD) testing at the missile range plus other countries are always blowing stuff up down there. I live 50 miles north of the Trinity Site and can hear the explosions. They have Patriot launchers, Thaad launchers, and they even have a Desert Ship to practice Navy to air weapons testing. Sometimes, they shoot missiles across the state from Gallop to White Sands. In Oct., a Black Dagger target missile launched from Fort Wingate to White Sands - 200 miles. Lots of contamination down there I would say besides the old plutonium. Areas the public can visit have low radiation levels, but fenced areas are higher. Parts of Chupadera Mesa were a plutonium Super Fund Site until they weren't.

What I'm worried about is that they often use chemicals in their exploded missiles to test their chemical warfare sensors. They often use Triethylphosphate (but also more toxic stuff and bacteria). Supposedly, by the time it gets north of the range it is sort of dispersed they say - Oh Well! - other than that the air is clean up here.

[drray23]

29. Cool.

I used to accompany my wife there on fossil gathering trips. She was pursuing a master in anthropology and this area is replete with a particular kind of fossils, small primates.

[TexasTowelie]

37. K&R! nt

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

38. You mean Trumpy didn't try to veto it?

I thought he hated parks.

[womanofthehills]

42. It's close to the missile range so he really can't use it for gas/oil

because every time they blow up their missiles, they close lots of roads for hours at a time.

[Stuart G]

47. K and R

[Rob WA]

52. Great News!

I echo the sentiments of others at the creation of this park. The elevation of a National Monument to National Park status ought to pave the way for creation of new NPS locations. Whether it will is doubtful, especially under this orange menace.