The Alamogordo Desert 161 



The El Paso Northeastern Railway passes the desert 

 on its eastern side. There are two stations on the line 

 where for several miles in every direction the surface is a 

 red-brown sand. One of these stations has been by the 

 railroad people appropriately named Desert, the other is 

 Escondida. The level of the two stations is the same, 

 four thousand feet, and the flora is identical, although 

 the points are thirty miles apart. Each, however, is by 

 itself unique and entirely separate from the other. The 

 dominant species is Yucca radiosa, so much so that these 

 points are called the yucca desert. Of course, the almost 

 ubiquitous mesquite is there and Atriplex canescens and 

 Artemisia species. There are other species to be sure, 

 such as forms of Chrysotliamnus and Ephedra, but the 

 plants first named give to the plain its character as far 

 as vegetation goes, and in topography as well : they not 

 only thrive here and come to abundant flower and fruit, 

 but they hold these peculiar sands otherwise driven 

 about the world by desert winds. 



Now it is a remarkable fact that the white sands, thirty 

 or forty miles off to the northeast, exhibit an almost 

 identical flora. The student hastens across the inter- 

 vening desert to meet that shining wall, expecting to 

 find all things new ; but, behold, the white sands are sands 

 first of all rather than anything else. Whatever their 

 chemistry, and they have their peculiar problem for the 

 chemist, only a vegetation that can endure a moving, 

 shifting terrene can flourish here. The white sands form 

 accordingly part of the yucca desert. Their relation to 

 vegetation is almost purely physical, but they exhibit 



