“To Infinity and Beyond!”
Leaving Anthony I head up I-25 to Las Cruces and then veer off northeast on Highway 70 up and over the Organ Mountains. In less than 10 miles I have climbed the pass and am descending into a vast plain bordered by mountains to the east and west, the Tularosa Basin. Large signs announced the presence of the “White Sands Missile Range, a top security government installation that covers over 4,000 square miles on the basin floor. The Tularosa Basin is a northern extension of the Chihuahuan Desert, piercing deep into center New Mexico. There is no outlet for water in the basin so the minimal amount that falls here seeps into the ground. The desert was not suitable for farming or raising cattle but sheep did well here and prior to the 1940’s the basin was a sleepy backwater. However, World War II brought the basin to the forefront of modern history as one of the cradles of modern space exploration. When the scientists at Los Alamos were looking for a place to test the first atomic bombs, the Tularosa Basin fit the bill. Remote, spacious (the basin is the size of the state of Connecticut), sparsely populated, and relatively flat, a site in the northern part of the basin was selected (called “Trinity”) and the first successful atomic bomb was detonated there in 1944. At the same time the Germans were pioneering the use of rockets in modern warfare and at the end of the war many of the German scientists were captured and co-opted into the Allied war effort, with Werner von Braun in particular becoming a key player in the development of the American space program over the next 25 years.
Dr. Robert Goddard, head if the American effort prior to his death in 1945, was key in the quest to find an appropriate location for a testing site for the rocket program and the characteristics that lead to the first atomic bomb being detonated in the basin were the same needed for the budding space program. Most of the basin was confiscated by the government under the authority of the War Powers Act and the White Sands Missile Range came into being. Several clues (particularly after my experience at Los Alamos) indicate that there is more to this part of the country than simply crossing a desert. First of all, there is a four lane freeway from Las Cruces up and over the mountains and across the basic for most of the 70 miles to Alamogordo, and the last 15 or so are actually a six lane freeway. I’m crossing in the middle of the day so there is minimal traffic but obviously something prompted the building of this size of highway. The second clue is that periodically popping up out of the desert in the middle of nowhere are beige complexes in the distance, access off the freeway controlled by security gates.
About half way across the basin suddenly a Border Patrol security checkpoint blocks the highway in both directions. The car in front of me is waved over to the side and I over hear the officer telling another that “the residence permit has expired.” I must look less suspicious as I am waved through after a quick look at my driver’s license!
About 40 miles into the desert “snow” begins to appear on my left and I am introduced to one of the wonders of the world, the White Sands of the Tularosa Basin. Billowing dunes of dazzling white rise in the distance as far as the eye can see on the northwest side of the highway, desert flows off to the south. A bit of a geology lesson is in order: In prehistoric times this was the bottom of a shallow sea (thus the flat landscape.) The white sand is made up almost entirely of gypsum, a substance rarely found in sand because it easily dissolves in water and is usually carried off to the sea. However, because there is no outlet for water in the Tularosa Basin, rainfall dissolves the gypsum present in the mountains to the west and then drains down to Lake Lucero, one of the lowest points in the basin. There the water evaporates , leaving gypsum crystals on the lake bed that then erode into very fine granules of white sand. The wind comes down off the mountains and blows the sand out onto the plain, thus creating the sand dunes. The lake bed is a small part of a much larger flat area, Alkali Flat, and the northern and eastern reaches of Alkali Flat are used for missile testing.
The sand dunes cover about 275 square miles on the western edge of the basin. A large portion of the dunes are within the boundaries of White Sands National Monument, the rest are protected as they are on the White Sands Missile Range. Near the edges of the formation a struggle wages between the desert plant life and sand.
Farther into the dunes the world becomes a bit surreal and several times I actually found myself driving as if I were being cautious on packed snow and ice… Note that the roads have to be plowed so even the edges look like snowplows has been through!
This looks exactly like the views I’ve seen countless times driving from Oregon to Montana at Christmas.
Eight miles into the monument the road reaches a turn-around and there is a picnic area for those who want to brave the heat to take a break in the “snow.”
Just a fascinating scene in the middle of the desert.
White Sands National Monument was created in 1933 and a visitor center and employee buildings were constructed by workers for the WPA (a New Deal program, the Works Project Administration was created to put people to work in the 1930’s during the Great Depression.) Due to the preservation aspects of the dry desert climate, the visitor’s center looks virtually the same as it did 80 years ago.
Built in the traditional Spanish style the visitors’ center contains a small museum and gift shop surrounding an interior courtyard.
Leaving the monument we get back on Highway 70 and continue to head northeast for another 15 miles to Alamogordo, the largest town in the Tularosa Basin. Alamogordo lies along the western base of the Sacramento Mountains which rise abruptly from the basin. It is long and narrow, about one mile wide and 5 miles long running north/south along Highway 70. The area has been home to humans for over 11,000 years as the springs at the base of the Sacramento Mountains provided a consistent source of water at the edge of the desert. The climate was too harsh and dry to raise cattle or crops, but it turned out that the climate is virtually the same as that in Iran, and pistachio trees flourish here (with enough irrigation). The self-proclaimed pistachio capital of the basin is McGinn’s, which you can’t miss just north of town.
This is the view looking east from my RV park across Alamogordo to the Sacramento Mountains, which rise abruptly from the basin floor. Note that there’s a faint tinge of green everywhere. The monsoon season is just ending and this has been the wettest season in years. The desert is green.
The town of Alamogordo is a child of the railroad. It was founded in 1898 as a planned community with wide streets and irrigation canals throughout. John Eddy, the founded, did not want a “Wild West Town” so Eddy declared that alcohol could only be sold on one block in his town, Block 50. Block 50 is on the corner of Highway 70 and 10th Street, the main intersection in town, and this regulation stayed in effect in Alamogordo until 1984! One of the results is that even today there are very few bars and clubs for a town of 30,000 located right next to a major military installation.
Alamogordo remained a sleepy little town for the next 30 years, generally dependent upon the railroad along with employment available at the New Mexico School for the Blind, established in 1903. Then World War II began and life in the basin changed forever. In 1942 just west of Alamogordo Holloman Air Force Base was constructed as a training facility for both American and British pilots. The testing of the first atomic bomb about 50 miles north of Alamogordo in 1945 brought fame (or infamy) to the area. The population of the town went from 3,000 to 20,000 by the early 1950’s as the White Sands Missile Range became the center of rocket development for the government and them morphed into space exploration. Today about 30,000 people live in the area, including nearly 6,000 on Holloman Air Force Base. Here’s another new learning for me: the German Air Force has actually been training in the United States since 1958, first at a number of bases around the nation but since 1992 centered in Alamogordo. The impact of the presence of the German contingent (and their families) is that the local supermarket has an aisle devoted to German products (much like the Hispanic aisle we see everywhere) and the Germans host a large Oktoberfest for the community each fall. Who knew? This is definitely a government town, between the military, NM School for the Blind, and a large branch of New Mexico State University.
At the risk of sounding sexist, Alamogordo is a little boys dream destination due to two of the major attractions in town. The first is the Toy Train Depot and Museum. Housed in the 1901 Southern Pacific train depot the museum has more than a thousand toy trains, some from as early as 1901. There’s also a little train ( the 1/5th scale Alamogordo and Alameda Narrow Gauge Railroad) that runs through the adjacent park. My children will be pleased to know that I didn’t make a fool out of myself and ride the train…
The Toy Train Depot and Museum
The depot, which is not very big, is jammed with toy trains (I always wanted a toy train but they were just too expensive back in the day…)
The highlight was definitely the monologue from Clyde, an old codger who latched on to me and hovered for over an hour, spilling forth with an incredible amount of trivia about trains (and whatever else came across his mind!) I don’t know why the picture didn’t turn out focused, but Clyde was too much a part of the experience to leave out, even if he’s a bit blurry!
I visited on a Sunday afternoon and the place was full of old men and little boys, Fortunately for me, an older couple came in and Clyde was obviously enamored with the wife (much to her dismay) so he switched his attention from me to her and I was able to wander unencumbered. There are several complete dioramas set up, and then in the back the best part of all, a complete room of running trains.
As you can see from the picture, the complex is elevated and you can walk under and into the model. Really cool!
After leaving the first part of my little boy fantasy, I moved on to the second, equally impressive male experience, the International Space Museum.. My inner “Buzz Lightyear” immediately came to the surface. “To Infinity and Beyond!”
The International Space Museum
Alamogordo is not a very attractive town. The “historic district” consists of roughly one block on nondescript buildings and otherwise it’s really a “strip” town, strung out along Highway 70. The glaring exception, and I do mean glaring, is the International Space Museum. Perched on the side of the mountain, it gleams above the town and desert floor and is visible for miles. Fortunately for me, the experience matched the architecture. The five story museum is flanked by a plaza celebrating the development of space travel. Located on the plaza are a number of historic relics from the beginnings of rocketry.
Sonic Wind No. 1 is the rocket sled used by Dr. John Stapp (the “fastest man in the world” at the time) in 1954 to travel at a speed of 632 miles per hour as part of an experiment to see how the human body would withstand sudden deceleration.
Above is “Little Joe 2”, used to test the Apollo launch escape system. Five of them were used during experiments on Holloman Air Force Base between 1963 and 1966 that lead to the development of the technology that allowed for the command module to separate from the rocket booster.
Below the V-2 (Vengeance 2) was a rocket used by the Germans towards the end of World War II to bomb London and other Allied cities. Both the United States and the Germans were in a race to develop rockets and an atomic bomb, but with the fall of Nazi Germany most of the German scientists defected to the Allied cause and many would up working in the United States, in particular Werner Von Braun. An editorial comment: it seems a bit ironic how fragile loyalty was to the German scientists who switched sides so easily in order to save themselves… The flip side, of course, is that the Allied space effort would have taken much longer without their assistance. This particular relic is the remnant of a test at the White Sands Missile Range after the war.
The view down the mountain and across the city to the mountains beyond is really impressive. That thin white line at the bottom of the mountains in the distance are the white sand dunes spilling across the basin floor.
Inside the building, you start by riding an elevator up to the top floor and then walking down a spiral to the first floor. One of the prize possessions of the museum is a real moon rock, a specimen collected in December 1972 by Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt. The rock is encased in a prism of Plexiglas set inside a glass security box.
The rocks and samples of other materials from the moon visits were brought back in special containers called “rock boxes” (clever of someone, wasn’t it?) 842 pounds of lunar material was brought back by the Apollo missions in these containers. The museum has four floors of memorabilia from the development of space travel, defense technology, and weapon research. Really worth the visit.
Not withstanding the brilliant white sands, Clyde the train engineer, and the wonders of space, the highlight of the Alamogordo visit happened as I was driving down off the mountain after my visit to the museum. I drove pass this and had to turn around to take a picture for all my “loyal” readers. Can’t tell you what prompted the creation of this traffic sign, but it was an official sign posted by the side of Scenic Drive in front of the New Mexico State University-Alamogordo campus. Draw your own conclusions about an appropriate caption, I just print it for your amusement…
Next up: A hole in the ground….
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