The White River Visitor Center is located on the Pine Ridge Reservation in the South Unit of Badlands National Park. The National Park Service co-manages the South Unit with the Oglala Lakota Tribe in order to protect and interpret Lakota heritage and to provide information about the cultural significance of Badlands National Park. Rangers at the center discuss Lakota heritage with visitors and offer impromptu historical and cultural talks and programs, including the significance of the Badlands and treaties with the Lakota. The detailed museum exhibits also depict the area’s rich and complex history.

The South Unit of the park is home to some of the region’s most valued natural resources. The park’s 244,000 acres feature spectacular scenery, including table mesas offering sweeping panoramas, deep canyons, washes, ravines and foreboding walls. Bison, bighorn sheep, deer, antelope, prairie dogs and black-footed ferrets make their homes along massive expanses of mixed-grass prairie.

The White River Visitor Center offers a staffed information desk, maps, exhibits, restrooms, picnic tables, water and visitors can get their NPS passport stamped. This visitor center is only open in summer.