what makes the sand white in new mexico
White Sands, New Mexico The desert is located in the Tularosa Basin of New Mexico. Its white sands are not composed of quartz, like most desert sands, but of gypsum and calcium sulfate. Unlike other desert sands, it is cool to the touch, due to the high rate of evaporation of surface moisture and the fact that the sands reflect, rather than absorb, the sun's rays. At 1185 meters above sea level, there are approximately 442 square kilometers of dune fields and is known to be the world's largest surface deposit of gypsum.[5]
New Mexico New Mexico received its name long before the present-day nation of Mexico won independence from Spain and adopted that name in 1821. Spanish explorers recorded this region as New Mexico (Nuevo México in Spanish) in 1563. In 1581, the Chamuscado and Rodríguez Expedition named the region north of the Rio Grande "San Felipe del Nuevo México."[19] The Spaniards hoped to find wealthy Mexican Indian cultures there similar to those of the Aztec (Mexica) Empire of the Valley of Mexico. The indigenous cultures of New Mexico, however, proved to be unrelated to the Aztecs and were not wealthy.[20][21] Before statehood, the name "New Mexico" was applied to various configurations of the U.S. Territory, to a Mexican state, and to a province of New Spain, all in the same general area but of varying extensions.[22]