49 Fun Facts About Great Sand Dunes National Park

Great Sand Dunes National Park lies in the south-central part of which US state?

Colorado. The dunes lie on the east side of the San Luis Valley, a high desert basin about the size of Connecticut, where the prevailing wind sweeps the valley's loose sand into a pocket of the mountains that wall it in.

The Great Sand Dunes hold which continental record?

Tallest in North America. The highest, Hidden Dune, is now measured at 741 feet, and the dunes grow up instead of spreading out because storm winds off the mountains keep pushing back against the prevailing southwest wind.

Star Dune at Great Sand Dunes is a classic 'star dune', a type named for which feature?

Ridges radiating from its peak. A star dune builds three or more arms only where the wind blows from several directions through the year, so the sand piles upward into a pyramid instead of spreading sideways.

Photographs of the Great Sand Dunes from the 1870s show that since then the biggest dunes have done what?

Barely moved. Set beside modern pictures, William Henry Jackson's early photographs show the same great ridges in the same places: loose grains skitter across the surface every day, but the giant dunes keep their shape and position.

The Sangre de Cristo range, which towers behind the Great Sand Dunes, belongs to which larger mountain system?

The Rockies. The range is still rising along active faults, and the uplift has been so great that fossils from the floor of an ancient sea now sit in rock layers high on its peaks.

The name Sangre de Cristo is Spanish for what?

Blood of Christ. Nobody is sure why, though the name is often said to come from the red glow the snowy peaks take on at sunrise and sunset.

Which president proclaimed Great Sand Dunes a national monument in March 1932?

Herbert Hoover, on March 17, 1932. His proclamation covered only the main dunefield, and it took until 2004 to add the mountains, creeks and wetlands that keep the dunes supplied with sand and water.

Which kind of group led the 1930s campaign to make the Great Sand Dunes a national monument?

A women's society. Members of the PEO Sisterhood in the San Luis Valley began a letter-writing campaign to local, state and national politicians in 1930 and had their national monument less than two years later.

Great Sand Dunes became a national park chiefly to stop what being pumped away?

Groundwater. Two companies in turn planned to pipe the valley's water to cities across the mountains, and studies made for the court fight showed the dunes depend on it, so in 2000 Congress approved a far larger park, completed in 2004.

What threat did the 1932 Great Sand Dunes National Monument aim to head off?

Gold mining and cement making. Gold really had turned up in the sand in the 1920s, and by the time locals rallied, miners were already working the dunes and sand was being hauled away to make cement.

Visitors reaching the dunes in late spring must first wade across which wide, shallow stream?

Medano. The name is Spanish for sand dune, and the creek lives up to it: it carries sand that has blown off the dunes back down to the valley floor, where the wind picks it up and piles it on again.

The creek at the foot of the Great Sand Dunes runs in rhythmic waves, a rare phenomenon known as what?

Surge flow. Mounds of sand build up on the creek bed like little dams until the water backed up behind them bursts through and a wave rolls downstream; then the bed rebuilds and it happens again.

Sand avalanching down the Great Sand Dunes can make which sound, celebrated in a 1940s Bing Crosby song?

A deep hum. The dunes 'sing' when sand slides down a steep face, whether a storm sets it off or a walker pushes it over the edge, and Crosby recorded a song about these singing sands in the 1940s.

What do sandboarders at Great Sand Dunes rub on the base of their boards before each run?

Wax. A sandboard has an extra-slick base that needs a fresh coat to glide over dry grains, while snowboards, skis and plastic snow sleds dig in and slide here only after rain or snow has soaked the sand.

Before the deep sand on the 4WD road beside the Great Sand Dunes, drivers are advised to do what?

Let air out of the tires. A softer tire spreads the vehicle's weight over a bigger footprint, as a snowshoe does, so it rides over loose sand instead of digging in; drivers pump back up before the stony canyon ahead.

The earliest hunters known at the Great Sand Dunes, late in the Ice Age, pursued which giant animal?

Mammoth. Clovis hunters followed the herds into a valley far wetter and greener than today's, and both mammoth bones and the hunters' big stone spear points have been found near the dunes.

Besides the dune field, mountain watershed and sabkha, what is the fourth part of the Great Sand Dunes system?

The sand sheet. This grassy plain wraps around the dune field on three sides and dwarfs it in area, and the small dunes that form out there creep across the grass until they join the giants.

What is the sabkha, one of the four parts of the Great Sand Dunes system?

A seasonally flooded salty wetland. Water gathers on the lowest ground in the valley and can leave only by evaporating, so the salts it carried stay behind and dry into a white crust.

Geologists confirmed in 2002 that much of the San Luis Valley, where the Great Sand Dunes stand, once lay beneath what?

A huge lake. It drained away more than 400,000 years ago, and the sand that streams had washed into it, and into the smaller lakes that followed, is what the wind later swept up into the dunes.

The dark streaks on the Great Sand Dunes are deposits of which heavy, iron-rich black mineral?

Magnetite. This iron oxide is heavier than the pale grains around it, so when wind or water carries the lighter sand off it stays behind in black patches, and a magnet will pick it up.

Dig a few inches into the Great Sand Dunes and the sand is what?

Moist, at any time of year. Rain and melting snow soak in and the loose dry layer on top slows their escape, leaving enough water for grasses and wildflowers to root in what looks like bare sand.

To date the Great Sand Dunes, scientists measure the time since buried sand grains were last exposed to what?

Sunlight. Buried quartz slowly stores energy from natural radiation in the ground and daylight wipes it clean, so the glow a grain gives off in the laboratory shows how long it has lain in the dark.

Which insect, a fast-running predator with a violin-shaped mark on its back, is found only at Great Sand Dunes?

Tiger beetle. The adults sprint across the open sand after ants and mites, while the grubs do the opposite: they sit tight in burrows and seize whatever small creature walks past.

Which rodent of the Great Sand Dunes gets all the water it needs from seeds and never has to drink?

Kangaroo rat. It comes out only at night, hoards the seeds it gathers in a burrow, and when a predator strikes it springs clear with a leap from its long hind legs.

A herd of which animal is ranched on Nature Conservancy land inside the boundary of Great Sand Dunes National Park?

Bison. They are a return, not a novelty: soldiers from Santa Fe recorded a herd of 500 in this valley in 1694, and today's animals graze fenced grassland that the public cannot enter.

Which native cutthroat lives in the creeks of Great Sand Dunes?

Rio Grande cutthroat. It has vanished from most of its native streams, but these creeks are a natural stronghold: they begin in alpine basins and end by sinking into the desert floor, so introduced fish cannot swim in.

Which birds break their migration in the San Luis Valley by the thousands every spring and fall?

Sandhill cranes. About 20,000 pause here on the way between a winter in New Mexico and nesting grounds in the northern states and Canada, resting and feeding in the valley's fields and wetlands.

Which people's name for the Great Sand Dunes is said to mean 'it goes up and down'?

Jicarilla Apache. The dunes lie in the tribe's traditional homeland, north of its present reservation in New Mexico, and in July 2019 its members gathered at the park to tell stories, show crafts and dance.

Blanca Peak, which towers just south of the Great Sand Dunes, is one of the four sacred mountains of which people?

Navajo. They call it Sisnaajini, their sacred mountain of the east: four peaks mark the corners of the traditional Navajo homeland, and this one stands for its eastern edge.

Which governor, who reconquered New Mexico after the Pueblo Revolt, led soldiers into the San Luis Valley in 1694?

Diego de Vargas. He is often called the first European in the valley, but the claim is disputed: men from Juan de Oñate's colony had probably ridden in as early as 1598, almost a century before him.

Whose 1807 journal holds the first known written description of the Great Sand Dunes, likening them to a sea in a storm?

Zebulon Pike. He had just struggled over the mountains through deep January snow with hungry, frostbitten soldiers, and he climbed one of the dunes with his spyglass to look for a river.

The American officer who explored past the Great Sand Dunes in 1807 was arrested soon afterwards by whom?

Spanish colonial authorities. He had built a log stockade on what was then Spain's side of the frontier, and soldiers took his party to Santa Fe and on to Chihuahua for questioning before escorting them home.

Which explorer, nicknamed the Pathfinder, led a winter expedition past the Great Sand Dunes in 1848 seeking a railroad route?

John C. Frémont. His men crossed the pass and skirted the dunes safely, but he then pushed on into the deeper snow of the higher mountains to the west, where the party broke up and many died of cold and hunger.

The Herards, who homesteaded above the Great Sand Dunes in the 1870s, dug ponds beside their creek to run what?

A trout hatchery. The family raised fish and cattle in their remote canyon for four generations, and the dome-shaped peak that rises over the dunes, Mount Herard, now carries their name.

The Trujillo family's homesteads beside the Great Sand Dunes earned which federal designation in 2012?

National Historic Landmark. Teofilo Trujillo raised sheep in cattle country, and in 1902 rival ranchers burned his house and the family left; the log house his son Pedro built nearby still stands.

Mosca Pass, the old wagon route to the Great Sand Dunes, shares its name with the Spanish for which insect?

Fly. Nobody is sure the insect is the reason, since an early explorer called Moscoso is another candidate, and for decades travellers knew the pass by a third name, after the trader Antoine Robidoux.

Mule trains of the 1830s passed the Great Sand Dunes on which trade trail linking New Mexico with California?

The Old Spanish Trail. Its caravans carried blankets woven in New Mexico to California and traded them there for horses and mules, and one branch of the route swung north through this valley, past the dunes.

Scarred ponderosa pines near the Great Sand Dunes show where Native people peeled the bark to use its inner layer as what?

Food. The inner bark was pounded and eaten or brewed into teas and medicine, and the pines survived the harvest: a grove of 72 peeled trees, some more than 500 years old, is still alive beside the dunes.

Wilderness status has barred which activity on the Great Sand Dunes since 1976?

Driving. Wilderness law bars motor vehicles, so no dune buggies or quad bikes run on these dunes; visitors climb them on foot and ride down on sleds and sandboards.

When lightning strikes the Great Sand Dunes, it fuses sand grains into a glassy tube called what?

Fulgurite. Storms strike the bare dunes so often that visitors are told to come down when one approaches, and each bolt can leave one of these hollow, branching tubes hidden just under the surface.

Which 30-foot waterfall south of Great Sand Dunes is hidden inside a rock crevasse?

Zapata Falls. The water drops inside a cleft in the rock, so seeing it means wading up the stream and into the crevasse, a trip the Park Service suggests for summer afternoons when the sand is too hot to walk on.

Big Spring Creek, a spring-fed stream west of the Great Sand Dunes, received which designation in 2012?

National Natural Landmark. The creek wanders out across grass-covered sand and keeps a ribbon of marsh alive there, a home for rare plants and animals in an otherwise arid valley.

Which city, about 35 miles to the southwest, is the closest to Great Sand Dunes National Park?

Alamosa. A railroad company founded it in 1878 as the end of its new line into the valley, and today it is the place to pick up a rented sandboard on the way to the dunes.

The mountain section of Great Sand Dunes was made a 'national preserve' instead of park land so that which activity could continue?

Hunting. Elk and bighorn hunters objected to the park plan because national parks are closed to their sport, so Congress put the high country in a preserve, where the law keeps hunting, fishing and trapping open.

Which bright yellow wildflower blooms across great tracts of sand at the Great Sand Dunes in late summer?

Prairie sunflower. It is unusually well adapted to drifting sand, and after a wet summer its blooms can number in the millions across the grasslands that surround the dunes.

Most of the sand in the Great Sand Dunes was carried all the way across the valley from which mountains?

The San Juan Mountains. Streams washed their volcanic debris down to the valley floor, far to the west, and the prevailing wind did the rest; the range that looms right over the dunes supplied only a little.

Which president signed the act redesignating Great Sand Dunes as a national park and preserve in November 2000?

Bill Clinton. He signed the act on November 22, 2000, but it let the park come into being only once enough land had been bought, so the new title had to wait until September 2004.

Great Sand Dunes won an international title in 2019 for the quality of its what?

Night skies. Dry air, high elevation and few city lights made it an International Dark Sky Park, a title that also obliges the park to limit its own outdoor lighting and work with neighbouring towns to cut their glow.

Which small alpine mammal of Great Sand Dunes National Preserve spends summer drying piles of grass to eat under the snow?

American pika. This small-eared cousin of the rabbit does not hibernate, so it spends the whole winter awake beneath the snowpack living on its hay, an unlikely neighbour for a field of desert dunes.