During his presidency, Herbert Hoover created the White Sands National Monument, one of several national parks he initiated in 1933. The park gets its name from the vast landscape of gypsum dunes. While gypsum or hydrous calcium sulfate is a common mineral found in many locations on Earth, the deposit in the New Mexico desert is rare because the geography, geology, and the water-evaporation cycles turned the gypsum into selenite crystals, which break up into sand-like particles.

From 1969 to 1978, several exotic species were introduced to the New Mexico desert, specifically to provide hunting opportunities for its residents and visitors. Reports have it that the idea was initially generated by an army general, who felt that the animals would easily acclimate to the landscape of the desert, and provide hunting and tourism revenue for the state. The animals came from the overflow populations of Albuquerque Zoo. They were nested in the wilderness. The oryx, or African gemsbok, proved to be one of the most successful species introduced. From an original group of nine zoo animals, a population of thousands emerged over the course of three decades. With no natural predators, and a climate and terrain similar to their native habitats, the animals quickly acclimated. At one time threatened to extinction in their native Africa, they now thrived in the American Southwest.

The animals did not stay put in the areas into which they were initially introduced, and nor were their breeding cycles properly understood during the time of their release into the wild. Populations grew quickly and without much monitoring. The animals began to populate White Sands Missile Range, the largest overland military test range and the largest military installation in the United States. It is located in the state of New Mexico and spreads across roughly 3,200 miles (8,300 km), encompassing the White Sands National Monument within it.

In the 1930s, rocket scientist Robert Goddard began rocket-testing in New Mexico, ushering in what would later be called the Space Age. At White Sands, the world entered the Atomic Age with the testing of the first atomic bomb at the Trinity Site on July 16, 1945. The aftermath of this blast created a new mineral, Trinitite, and left a significant stratagraphical impact, in advance of the future devastation it would ultimately produce.

By the early 1990s, the oryx had begun to cause vehicle collisions and conflicts with missions, and to interfere with other activities on the range. A management plan was devised. A limited number of hunting expeditions were organized and arranged through a lottery system, which continues today. In 2009, over 4,000 people sought the opportunity to hunt oryx on the range. Today over 1,600 oryx are harvested each season from White Sands Missile Range.

White Sands is a place of contradictions—a recreational area surrounded by military testing sites and installations; a pre-atomic landscape 60 miles from where the first atomic bomb was detonated; a snowy white landscape where temperatures can reach over 110°F. If Hoover had not protected the area by designating it a national park, some speculate that it could have supplied the world with enough gypsum for drywall and construction materials for 1,000 years. The site was destined to become a World Heritage Site, but controversy over whether it would eventually impede the nearby military operations led to the passing of a bill that eventually made it illegal for the area to be designated a World Heritage Site.

No matter: the area is a “heritage site” layered with evidence of the Anthropocene, a place where invasion ecology, human technological innovation, and the largest deposit of the substance that constitutes much of the built world will lay record to anthropocenic history.