Chihuahuan Frontier

As travelers drive along Federal Highway 45 across northern Chihuahua State, just 50 kilometers south of Juárez, an extraordinary feature of the Chihuahuan Desert stands out in the distance - the Samalayuca Dunes.

White, imposing and towering, this huge tract of fine silicon dioxide sand is unique in Mexico, and a south-of-the-border sister to New Mexico's White Sands.

As habitat to 248 vegetal and 154 animal species, most of them endemic, the Samalayuca Dunes holds precious relicts of an long-gone era when the area laid under the Thetys Sea.

Now popular recreational destination for juarenses and a one-time movie setting for Dune, the old médanos saw the exhausted caravans of Spanish conquistadores trudging by during the early stages of Mexico's nation-building.

Last week, the federal government declared an area of 63,182 hectares of the Samalayuca Dunes a natural protected zone.