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The Gypsum Sea No. 1
White Sands, near Alamogordo, New Mexico, USA
32.96, -106.14 · Captured 2026-06-11
Not listed for purchase yet — join the waitlist for any format above and we’ll email you the moment it’s available. Size & Framing Guide
On 11 June 2026, the Sentinel-2 satellite looked down on the Tularosa Basin in southern New Mexico and found the strangest coastline in America — one with no ocean. This is White Sands: 275 square miles of pure gypsum sand, blown into dunes so bright they read from orbit like a sea frozen mid-wave, its ragged edge pushing against tan desert and the reddish alluvial fans sloping off the mountains to the east.
Those rust-coloured streaks aren't weather — they're real ground, sediment washed down old drainage channels off the San Andres Mountains, one of the starkest edges between mineral and desert anywhere on the continent.
