El Paso Mission Trail & White Sands National Park

A day combining three of the oldest standing church buildings in the United States with the world's largest gypsum dune field. The El Paso Mission Trail follows three Spanish colonial missions east of El Paso that predate the Alamo by over a century: Ysleta Mission (1682), the oldest continuously active parish in Texas and one of the oldest in the nation; Socorro Mission (1691); and San Elizario Presidio Chapel (1789). The missions were established by Tigua (Tiwa-speaking Pueblo people) and Spanish settlers who fled north from the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 in New Mexico — the missions of the lower Rio Grande valley are thus the consequence of one of the most significant Indigenous resistance events in North American history. White Sands National Park (90 miles from El Paso) covers 275 square miles of pure white gypsum sand in the Tularosa Basin — gypsum dissolved from the San Andres Mountain deposits, transported to the basin floor, and crystallized and wind-eroded into the most extensive gypsum dune field on Earth.