Whiteclay Nebraska

Census-designated place · Sheridan County · Population 8 (2020 census) · ZIP 69365 · Founded 1904

About Whiteclay

Whiteclay is an unincorporated community and census-designated place of 8 people (2020) in Sheridan County, on NE 87 at the South Dakota line, about 2 miles south of Pine Ridge, South Dakota, on the Pine Ridge Reservation, and about 20 miles north-northwest of Rushville. NE 87 is its main street and continues into South Dakota as SD 407. It has a post office (ZIP 69365), Whiteclay Grocery, a Dollar General and a Family Dollar. Whiteclay is on Mountain Time.

History

An executive order in 1882 added a 50-square-mile "White Clay Extension" to the Pine Ridge Reservation as a buffer against the liquor trade. A 1904 order returned 49 square miles of it, and traders set up just south of the line; the post office opened on December 22, 1904, named for White Clay Creek. The population was about 100 to 110 at its 1940 peak. For decades the town's four beer stores sold more than 3 million containers a year. In April 2017 the Nebraska Liquor Control Commission refused to renew their licenses, the stores closed at the end of that month, and the Nebraska Supreme Court ended the appeals in September 2017.

Since then the Whiteclay Makerspace has opened in the former Arrowhead store, with quilting, beading, sewing, leather and woodworking equipment for local artists, and Thunder Valley Community Development Corporation, a Lakota-led nonprofit from Pine Ridge, bought 48 acres in 2021 for a healing community for tribal members recovering from addiction.

Things to see

the Whiteclay Makerspace in the former Arrowhead store (open in 2024; call ahead)