Month: January 2025

Now that White Sands has officially become a national park, you might be wondering about the lovely sights you’ll have the opportunity to see here. Whether you’ve visited a dozen times or planning your first trip, the Interdune Boardwalk Trail is one route you’ll definitely want to check out.

Did you know it’s a great location to embark on a hike?

Kent Kanouse/Flickr

This park is home to five different hiking trails, each showcasing the unforgettable glimmering landscape in varying difficulties. However, today we’re going to check out one trail that everyone in the family will be able to enjoy, including those in strollers, wheelchairs, and even four-legged friends.

This is the Interdune Boardwalk Trail, an accessible trail that measures just 0.4 miles round-trip.

Sarah Nichols/Flickr

Short yet scenic, this trail gives everyone the opportunity to see the dunes and the fragile nature that lives in the soil and basins between dunes.

The boardwalk stands just inches above the land and slowly meanders across the terrain with educational signs about the environment…

White Sands National Park/Facebook

…and even has a shady area for anyone needing a short rest.

Jasperdo/Flickr

What makes this trail so special? Aside from the accessibility and ease of walking the landscape, it introduces visitors to and preserves the delicate interdune nature.

Jasperdo/Flickr

This area between dunes is a haven for plants, which thrive off the cyanobacteria living in an extremely thin layer of the crust. Cyanobacteria is a blue-green algae responsible for helping to provide nitrogen to the plants here and protecting the landscape from erosion.

In fact, this area is so delicate that a boot print in the crust can still be seen five years later!

Sarah Robertson/AllTrails

This is why it’s important to stick to the designated trails when visiting.

Have you been on this super short trail before? What did you enjoy learning about the area?

White Sands National Monument/Flickr

The Interdune Boardwalk Trail is located at White Sands National Park, approximately 4.5 miles from the fee station.

Google Maps

The trail measures 0.4 miles round-trip and takes about 20-30 minutes to complete when reading all the informational signs along the way. You can learn more about the trail and the national park by visiting the website or AllTrails page.

Website: National Park Service
Trail: AllTrails
Facebook: White Sands National Park
Phone: (575) 479-6124

Looking for another great little hike to take here in New Mexico? Check out some of our favorites for a short winter hike in 7 Cool And Calming Hikes To Take In New Mexico To Help You Reflect On The Year Ahead.

Address: White Sands National Park, New Mexico, USA

It just might be history that makes New Mexico so enchanting. The state is home to some of the oldest places in the country: the oldest continuously inhabited settlement, the oldest house, the oldest church. Another designation to add to that list? New Mexico is also home to one of the oldest zoos in the Southwest.

March 4, 2021 | Original Article | by Monica Spencer

Founded in 1898, the Alameda Park Zoo in Alamogordo has staked its claim as the oldest zoo in the Southwest.

Ralph Foster Pollock via Library of Congress/LC-DIG-ds-02579

It was originally created as a deer park and leisurely entertainment stop for train passengers to stretch and walk as the train refueled.

There is some question about the zoo’s claim as the oldest in the Southwest, however.

Alameda Park Zoo/Facebook

While it certainly is the oldest in the state, depending on your definition of the United States’ southwestern region, zoos in Dallas and Denver may have Alameda Park Zoo beat by just a couple years. However, we prefer the definition of the Southwest as Arizona, New Mexico, and the lower portions of Utah and Colorado, which makes this zoo the oldest of the region.

Over time, this entertainment stop slowly grew and accumulated more animals into a small but fully-fledged zoo.

Allen’s/Wikimedia Commons

In the early days, locals donated animals for modest exhibits. Today, however, the zoo covers 12 acres and is home to approximately 200 local and exotic animals.

The animals you’ll find living on the zoo grounds are wide and varied.

Alameda Park Zoo/Facebook

Local and regional animals housed at the zoo include bobcats, Mexican gray wolves, and tortoises.

John Krall/Google

Alameda Park Zoo is located in the heart of Alamogordo, at the northeast corner of White Sands Boulevard and 10th Street.

Google Maps

The zoo is open daily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and is closed on Christmas and New Year’s. For details about special hours, admission rates, and more, be sure to visit the zoo’s website or Facebook page.

Address: 1021 North White Sands Boulevard, Alamogordo, NM 88310
Phone: 575-439-4290
Website: ci.alamogordo.nm.us
Facebook: Alameda Park Zoo

Looking forward to a delicious snack after visiting Alameda Park Zoo? If a truly New Mexican frozen treat sounds like something right up your alley, you’ll want to stop by Caliche’s Frozen Custard for a sundae topped with a unique green chile marmalade. Read more in Caliche’s Frozen Custard in New Mexico Is Home to an Ice Cream Sundae You Won’t Find Anywhere Else.

Address: 1021 N White Sands Blvd, Alamogordo, NM 88310, USA

April 7, 2021 | Original Article | By Ashley M. Biggers 

In 1983, the Atari video game company buried a surplus of game cartridges in southern New Mexico at a landfill in Alamogordo. Among them were unsold copies of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, widely considered the biggest failure in video-gaming history. The event quickly devolved into urban legend. However, Joe Lewandowski, then a solid-waste consultant and now a volunteer for the Tularosa Basin Historical Society, knew the truth. He helped dig up the cartridges more than a decade later, and even oversaw the sale of 800 of them on eBay for $107,000 to benefit the historical society and its museum, among other charities.

“It’s just one stranger thing that happened in the basin,” he says. Nestled between the Sacramento Mountains to the east and Holloman Air Force Base and White Sands National Park to the west, Alamogordo has a knack for the unusual. The world’s first atomic bomb exploded not far from here at the Trinity Test site on July 16, 1945. (The test site opens annually to visitors.) Ham, the first non-human hominid to fly in space, is buried at the New Mexico Museum of Space History, in town.

“Alamogordo’s past is unique to almost anywhere in New Mexico,” Lewandowski says. It has connections to early Indigenous peoples, the Wild West, the railroad, sawmills, rocketry, an often-overlooked pottery studio, and the Space Race—just to name a few.

This city’s storied past grew longer recently with the 2018 discovery of the longest fossilized human trackways at White Sands National Park. Ancient humans created the paths some 10,000 years ago. White Sands—one of the country’s newest national parks—protects the world’s largest gypsum dune field. The field is more than a geological and ecological wonder. Part of the field is devoted to the White Sands Missile Range. Still in operation today, it’s where German V-2 rockets were tested after World War II and NASA’s Space Shuttle Columbia landed in 1982. The New Mexico Museum of Space History chronicles the town’s many connections to space exploration and memorializes famous faces in the International Space Hall of Fame.

The historical society oversees another oddity: the ghost-town ruins of the La Luz Pottery Company, in the nearby town of La Luz. In the 1930s, the company churned out up to 200 styles of pottery—vases, pots, and tiles that today are collectors’ items. The society leads tours of the site and displays samples of the pottery at its museum.

The town’s family-friendly side shows itself at Alameda Park Zoo. Founded in 1898, it claims the title as the oldest zoo in the Southwest. The small, 12-acre zoo features some 200 animals representing about 60 species, including the Mexican wolf. Families also enjoy tours of Heart of the Desert Pistachios & Wine (adults should plan ahead for Wine Down Wednesdays on the patio there) and PistachioLand. At the latter, visitors hop in pistachio-themed golf carts to see the orchards where one of the region’s favorite crops grow. The photo op with the World’s Largest Pistachio road-side sculpture outside is a must see.

“Alamogordo is a Northeastern town transplanted into the Southwest,” Lewandowski says. From tree-lined avenues to blocks of two- and three-story brick buildings, its aesthetic stands out from New Mexico’s typical adobe or adobe-style architecture. It shares at least one similarity with other Land of Enchantment locales, however: Settlers arriving in the harsh landscape were “able to take nothing and make something out of it,” he says. That “something” is always surprising.

Visit AlamogordoNMTrue.com or call 1-800-826-0294 for more information.

PistachioLand in Alamogordo draws a crowd to its nut orchard, winery and a 30-foot pistachio.

September 1, 2020, updated September 21, 2021 | by Cristina Carreon | Original Article

Above: PistachioLand’s giant nut is a tribute to owner Timothy McGinn’s father, Thomas. Photograph by Megan Dailey.

ON THE NORTH END OF ALAMOGORDO, McGinn’s PistachioLand draws a crowd with its nut orchard, country store, winery, ice cream parlor—and a whopper of a roadside attraction. The 30-foot-tall tan-and-green pistachio was built in memory of owner Timothy McGinn’s father, Thomas McGinn, who died in 2007. To create it, McGinn gave local craftsman Ernest Martinez a fresh pistachio and asked him to scale a version to the size of a windmill. It took roughly four months to build a steel framework with iron pipes welded on, shape the outside with wire netting, and then coat it with cement and gallon upon gallon of paint. During construction, complaints rolled in. Too big. Too close to the highway. But one day, even as scaffolding blocked half of the structure’s big body, a man stopped to snap the first picture. Once the scaffolding disappeared, another visitor asked everyone to clear away so he could take his shot. Today, people visit Alamogordo from all over the world, in part to buy bags of chile-dusted or chocolate-covered pistachios but also to claim a selfie, smiling below the world’s largest pistachio.

PistachioLand, 7320 US 54/70, is open daily, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. The McGinns also sell products online.

March 9, 2022 | Original Article

The earliest kernels of 575 Brewing Company began fermenting in Bill Arnold’s Alamogordo kitchen. “I just bought a homebrew kit one day,” he says. “I made a mess, but it was kind of drinkable.” He expanded to the garage and began sharing with neighbors. “I just got interested. I’m the type that, once I start something, the next thing you know I’m engulfed in it.”

He and his wife, Vicky, are now happily immersed in the bustling warehouse-style brewery and beer garden they opened in Alamogordo in January 2020. Live music, camaraderie, food, and excellent craft beer are all on tap. “People come and they sit and talk for hours,” says Arnold. “Families, kids, dogs—and they’re not pressured to leave. It’s a relaxing environment, and that’s what we want.”

With four kids and seven grandkids, the Arnolds didn’t plan to open a brewpub. The idea bubbled up after they’d retired—Arnold in 2014, after a 26-year career as a Border Patrol agent, and Vicky in 2017, after teaching middle school English. They took several road trips up the California coast and into Canada, stopping at more than 100 craft breweries along the way. “We tried a bunch of beers and thought, maybe we could do this,” Arnold says.

To learn commercial brewing, Arnold spent a couple of years, off and on, apprenticing with Spotted Dog Brewery, in Mesilla. While working on a project at Los Alamos National Laboratory, he connected with Bathtub Row Brewing, where he helped mill grain and became familiar with its three-barrel brewing system.

When Arnold began developing his roster of beers for 575 Brewing, he named many for things you can see in Alamogordo. Sleeping Lady, a light American ale and his most popular beer, pays homage to twin volcanic peaks in the Sacramento Mountains that resemble … well, you guessed it. Sunspot, a Scottish ale, celebrates the Sunspot Solar Observatory, in the Lincoln National Forest.

With 15 house beers on tap, nosh plates of cheese, meats, and other treats, visiting food trucks, great mountain views from the patio, and a sprawling beer garden for live music, 575 Brewing caught on quickly. Friends, families toting chess and checkers, and military personnel from Holloman Air Force Base are all regulars, along with some ultramarathon runners who named 575 Brewing’s Dark Canyon Ale.

“We never envisioned the way we would blow up,” Arnold says. “I wanted a little Cheers, you know, where everybody knows your name.”

DRAFT PICKS

Bill Arnold recommends three of his favorite brews.

Rim Trail. Named for a popular trail in the Sacramento Mountains, the golden pale ale is Arnold’s go-to pint. “It’s one of the first beers I brewed in my kitchen,” he says.

White Sands Wit. The Belgian white is spiced with chamomile and coriander, which gives it a unique taste, he says.

Fallen Wings IPA. With every new keg of the hoppy India pale ale, 575 Brewing donates to the Fallen Wings Foundation, created by Holloman Air Force Base pilots to support the families of pilots and crew members everywhere who are killed while serving.

There’s so much to discover at White Sands National Park, and scientists are just now beginning to uncover its secrets.

November 4, 2020, updated March 10, 2022 | by Elizabeth Miller | Photos by Tira Howard | Original Article

BY DUSK, THE WHITE SANDS NATIONAL PARK dune field seems marked by a strange kind of hieroglyphics—footprints and long vertical lines of people scrambling up and then sliding down the steepest faces. The surreal, sinuous curves of white in this otherworldly place elicit an immediate sense of amazement and promote a carnival-like atmosphere.

People of all ages climb onto sleds—a mission so endorsed by the park that the saucers are for sale in the gift shop and recommended on several wayfinding signs. Other visitors rest on camp chairs under beach umbrellas. Laughter, jubilant calls, and delighted squeals carry across the sand.

As I walk the gypsum ridges in late August, a barefoot man strolls along the crest of one, playing an accordion. Its opened case lies by his car, near a pair of kicked-off cowboy boots. He plays and sings while walking across a dune, a photographer crouching near him, capturing the scene. The sun moves toward the mountains rimming the Tularosa Basin, a jagged blue line on the horizon. A breeze picks up. The temperature drops.

The texture of the sand changes over the sides of a single dune—deep and soft in places and wind-firmed to a walkable crust in others, the surface scalloped in the way that waves often ripple undersea sand. As the sun sets, these dunes reveal how many shades can hide in a single color: pink-white, lavender-white, blue-white, gray-white, brown-white. People wandering the dunes transform into tiny black specks on the otherwise white landscape, a place unlike anywhere else on the planet, a light smudge visible from space.

In January 1933, President Herbert Hoover recognized its importance by designating White Sands as a national monument. In December 2019, the more than 145,000 federally protected acres became a national park. Like the windblown grains all around me, the shift may seem subtle but could represent seismic changes in our knowledge, understanding, and ability to tap into the many secrets this landscape contains.

New national parks generate excitement, and this January and February, White Sands witnessed its highest attendance ever for those two months. Then the pandemic came, dampening visitation. (It drew 608,785 visitors in 2019, a boost for the cities of Alamogordo, about 15 miles to the northeast, and Las Cruces, about 50 miles to the southwest.)

Go ahead and take off your shoes. Even during the height of summer, the sands feel cool.

The landscape itself unveils new mysteries as scientists poke into its inner workings. That’s one reason its elevation to national park status calls for celebration: The national monument language spoke solely to preserving the dunes and their sand; the national park designation encompasses other natural resources, a nod to the robust research under way and a spur for more of it.

“In the last 20 years or so, a lot of what we know about the park has changed,” says David Bustos, resource program manager with White Sands National Park. In fact, the designation specifically cited recent discoveries in paleontology, archaeology, geology, and hydrology. “That allows us to request special assistance and additional funds to understand these resources, but also to preserve them. Now it’s part of our mission.”

White Sands remains a largely untapped wonder, drawing researchers from throughout the United States and beyond. Eric Metzler, the resident moth expert, began researching species in the park in 2007. That thrilled Bustos, and the two expected to soon amass a comprehensive view of all moth species in the park.

Instead, Metzler is still at work, having identified 600 species in a swath only 100 yards across and 2 miles long. Each year, he finds and describes a new species just one dune over from the previous. Of the 60 new species he has discovered in White Sands, an astonishing 54 of them are endemic, found only in this hot whitescape of an environment. “That particular rate of endemism is unknown in the world, except perhaps in the Galápagos Islands,” he says.

“It’s a very unique place, so it draws a lot of people for that reason,” says Ryan Ewing, an associate professor of geology at Texas A&M who comes to the park to study its sand dunes. “The reason we go out there is that this is like a natural laboratory.”

Read More: How the Dunes at White Sands Shift Over Time

The park is also reaching out to Native tribes, many of whom have stories that add a layer to the archaeological work under way and the understanding of how the landscape has changed over time.

“People visiting White Sands have had a special connection for a long, long time,” Bustos says. “It’s a special place, and it always has been.”

Like the colors of the sunset reflecting off the dunes, Bustos finds variety in the work here, be it research on fossil footprints, a potential mission to Mars, or the military activities at nearby White Sands Missile Range. “There are so many different pieces,” he says. “So many incredible stories, you never know how the day’s going to go or what you’re going to find.”

WHITE SANDS NATIONAL PARK 

Some White Sands experiences are currently unavailable, but the park is open. When restrictions lift, expect sunset concerts, star parties, and campouts. Admission is $20 per vehicle or $15 per person (if only one adult is in a vehicle), good for seven days. You can drive up to 16 miles in a loop to view the dunes. The park is open every day of the year except Christmas. Winter hours (November 1–February 7) are 7 a.m.–6 p.m. Check the website for other hours, restrictions, and changes. Dogs and other pets must be on a leash. Bicycling is permitted on the asphalt and packed gypsum, but not on the dunes themselves. 575-479-6124.

March 30, 2022 | Original Article

A gateway to White Sands National Park, Alamogordo delivers experiences with a rich past and vibrant present.

With a Smithsonian-Affiliated Space History Museum, the oldest zoo in the Southwest, and flourishing pistachio farms and wineries, Alamogordo makes an activity-filled home base for a trip to nearby White Sands National Park. “No matter when you visit, you’re going to see things you can’t see anywhere else in the world,” says Alamogordo spokesperson Michelle Brideaux. Here are five can’t-miss stops.

Lift off. Discover New Mexico’s exciting role in the development of the U.S. space program at the New Mexico Museum of Space History. Through spaceflight artifacts, an International Space Hall of Fame, and the Spitz Sci-dome, featuring a 4K full-dome planetarium and theater projection system, the museum takes you on a fantastic journey through the Space Age.

Go wild. Founded in 1898 along with the city, the Alameda Park Zoo began as a deer park to entertain travelers as their trains refueled. Now the 12-acre zoo showcases 300 animals representing more than 50 species, including marmosets, kangaroos, and a dromedary camel named Gabe.

Get cracking’. Alamogordo’s arid climate provides a fertile environment for grapes and pistachios. Get the inside dirt on Heart of the Desert Pistachios & Wines’ operation with a walking tour, then reward yourself with a glass of award-winning Malaysia Bianca. PistachioLand’s motorized tour through the orchards and vineyards highlights growing and harvesting the crops as well as the 30-foot-tall World’s Largest Pistachio sculpture. You can’t miss it.

Step back in time. For a taste of life in territorial New Mexico, visit the restored 19th-century ranch house of Oliver Milton Lee (1865–1941), a prominent settler, legislator, and namesake of Oliver Lee Memorial State Park. Located at the foot of the Sacramento Mountains, the 640-acre park features opportunities to hike, camp, picnic, and view wildlife.

Take a spin. Founded by eccentric Rhode Island scion Rowland Hazard III in 1930, La Luz Pottery produced some of America’s most coveted pottery and tiles before closing in 1949. The Tularosa Basin Historical Society offers tours of the 235-acre property and buildings.

NIGHTS AT WHITE SANDS

Evenings are a magical time to visit White Sands National Park.

On full-moon nights, the park stays open late, and you can enjoy live music in a natural amphitheater, from May through October.

Walk the gypsum dunes beneath a silvery moon on the night before the full moon, April through October.

Take a ranger-guided sunset stroll offered daily, and learn about the park’s plants, animals, and geology.