As noted by early Australian explorers such as Ernest Giles[2] large portions of the desert are characterized by gravel-covered terrains covered in thin desert grasses and it also contains extensive areas of undulating red sand plains and dunefields, low rocky/gravelly ridges and substantial upland portions with a high degree of laterite formation.

The sandy soil of the lateritic buckshot plains is rich in iron.

[2] In much of the region, especially the drier western portion, the majority of people living in the area are Indigenous Australians.

In 1984, due to a severe drought which had dried up all of the springs and depleted the bush foods, a group of the Pintupi people who were living a traditional semi-nomadic desert-dwelling life, walked out of a remote wilderness in the central-eastern portion of the Gibson Desert (northeast of Warburton) and made contact for the first time with mainstream Australian society.

Young Indigenous adults from the Gibson Desert region work in the Wilurarra Creative programs to maintain and develop their culture.