White River Visitor Center

The visitor center is located on the Pine Ridge Reservation and offers a staffed information desk, exhibits, restrooms, picnic tables, and water. Impromptu talks are available by request. This visitor center is only open during the summer season.

Per the National Park Service, as of 2026-08-04

Per the National Park Service, as of 2026-08-04

The visitor center is located on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. It lies at the intersection of BIA 2 and BIA 27. It is approximately 30 miles south of Scenic, SD, and 60 miles east of Hermosa via Highway 40.

White River Visitor Center. 288 words. The grey double-wide trailer has a wooden deck with stairs and a parallel gently sloping wood path leading to the to the main entrance of the building. The building is surrounded on its south and east side by large parking lots accommodating dozens of vehicles. The building is surrounded by prairie grasses extending for miles towards layered, jagged badlands formations hundreds of feet high. On the southwest side of the building down a grassy knoll, there are five picnic tables with shade structures. In the main area of the front, south-facing, wall of the building there is a picnic table beneath a large cottonwood tree. Southeast of the building, approximately 30 feet across the street, is there is a tan concrete welcome sign with the National Park Service logo and the text "Welcome to Badlands National Park" with a smaller sign beneath it reading “Managed in cooperation with the Oglala Sioux Tribe.” The main entrance is on the south side of the building, with an emergency exist on the north side. Beside the main entrance, a sign affixed to the building read in English and Lakota: Makȟa Makȟošiča Oínažiŋ Badlands National Park Makhízíta Wakpá Thiléaŋg Ománi Hí Chokáta Thípi White River Visitor Center In cooperation with the Oglala Sioux Tribe. The interior of the building is an open space with a large, multicolored and perpendicular circular exhibit in the middle in the style of a medicine wheel design. The east side of the building has two unisex bathrooms and a water fountain. The west side of the building has a small office, and a square room with multiple wall exhibits and a small TV that functions as a theater. A wayside exhibit outside the building has the following text and images: The Badlands Gunnery Range: More than a third of a million acres of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, including much of what is now the South Unit of Badlands National Park, was set aside for gunnery and bombing practice by the U.S. Army Air Corps at the start of World War II. Residents had to move on short notice. Some never returned. With sound an fury, mock battles raged throughout the war. Bombs burst among fossil bones. In the sky young pilots improved their aim by shooting at wide ribbons of nylon net strung behind tow planes. Occasionally a bullet clipped a tow cable, and a net fluttered to earth. By war's end, many nearby ranchers had screened their windows with salvaged netting. Some told tales of stray bombs and bullets. While Granny Saunders fried eggs on morning, an errant shell crashed through her roof, her bed, and the bedroom floor. (black and white photos of large bomber planes with approximately 30' wing spans accompanied by text: "The workhorse bombers of World War II, a pair of B-17s makes a run over the Badlands Gunnery Range" and "Tow planes with target nets.") End of Description.

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