Great Sand Dunes, the Ice Age, and the Genesis Flood

Heading west in the formerly United States, a traveler encounters the Rocky Mountains (which we generously share with Canada). The state of Colorado has the Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve, larger than the Sleeping Bear Dunes of Michigan.

You ever walk onto a sandy beach and make ouch noises because it is hot? In the summer, these puppies are substantially hotter than the air temperature. We will move on to discuss how the dunes got there.

Great Sand Dunes National Park & Preserve, Flickr / NPS Natural Resources (public domain)

Consider sand a spell (like when you remembered hot-footing it on the beach). It is unique and small. Both uniformitarian and creation geologists agree that there have to be special conditions to make a sand dune in the first place, and there are also conditions that can stop it from happening, such as grass growing.

Conditions today would not let those dunes form, so they obviously had to be very different in the past. The culprit is the Ice Age. While some secular geologists agree with creationists that there was only one Ice Age, other secularists believe there were many — but they cannot provide evidence for them. Indeed, they cannot explain how even one ice age can start, let alone stop.

Biblical creationists have explanations that make sense of the observed data. First, the Genesis Flood had volcanic and plate tectonic activity that caused the Ice Age. Then, there were glaciers doing some grinding work for a long spell (but not nearly as long as secular geologists believe). Glaciers melted and carried sand, then the winds did the work.

The tallest sand dunes in North America are found in Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve, located on the eastern edge of the San Luis Valley in southern Colorado. The largest of the dunes reaches 700 feet above the valley floor. Visitors to the park have to slog up sand for about an hour just to reach its top!

A satellite’s-eye view shows the dunes nestled in a bend of the Sangre de Cristo mountain range. Signage at the park attributes the dunes to the unique wind patterns that cross the San Luis Valley, which extends westward from the dunes around 50 miles until it reaches the San Juan Mountains. But surely there is more to this story.

Shirley and everyone else can read the rest of the article by clicking on "Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve: Colossal Ice Age Remnants."