Propagation of evaporation drying front into an initially saturated porous medium may exhibit irregular patterns due to variations in pore sizes where water is displaced from large pores to support evaporation from saturated smaller pores. These processes are accentuated in heterogeneous media with large textural contrasts leading to preferential drying and mass flow from coarse textured regions in support of evaporation from saturated fine textured regions. Hele-Shaw cells with vertical and horizontal sharp textural interfaces between coarse and fine sand domains were used to study water distribution during evaporation using neutron transmission technique and images with dyed water. For vertical textural interfaces evaporation from saturated fine sand was sustained by mass flow from coarse sand region manifested by preferential propagation of drying front exclusively into the coarse sand. Direct observations of water flow from coarse to fine sand were obtained from neutron radiography using heavy water as a tracer. Maximum drying front depth in the coarse sand is determined by the difference in air-entry values of the two sands. No effects on evaporation rate due to mass flow resistance were observed when the fine sand region was reduced from 75% to 5% for similar external evaporative conditions. For horizontal layers of fine over coarse sand, the drying front initially propagates in fine sand until air enters the coarse sand resulting in an abrupt displacement of disproportionally large amounts of water from bottom coarse to overlaying fine layer driven by capillary pressure difference between air entry values of the sands. Subsequently, drying front invades preferentially the coarse sand with no changes in liquid distribution in the fine sand. Preferential evaporation patterns from texturally-heterogeneous soils at scales relevant for mass flow result in an increase in overall evaporative losses relative to surfaces represented by homogenous effective properties.