Emergency Crime Scene and Biohazard Cleanup in White Clay, NE

White Clay — spelled 'Whiteclay' by the Census Bureau — is an unincorporated census-designated place (CDP) in Sheridan County, Nebraska, on Nebraska Highway 87 at the South Dakota state line.

The community's Lakota name is Makȟásaŋ, meaning 'whitish or yellowish clay,' a reference to White Clay Creek.

Whiteclay is one of Nebraska's smallest census places, with a population of just 8 at the 2020 census and 10 at the 2010 census, spread over about 0.07 square miles.

Whiteclay sits about two miles south of Pine Ridge, South Dakota, on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, where alcohol possession and consumption are prohibited.

In 1882, an executive order added a 50-square-mile strip of Nebraska land, known as the White Clay Extension, to the reservation as a buffer meant to keep alcohol away from the reservation.

In 1904, President Theodore Roosevelt signed an executive order removing 49 of the 50 square miles of the extension from the reservation, and traders promptly opened a post at the border that grew into Whiteclay, which peaked at 104 residents in 1940.

For decades Whiteclay's economy centered on four beer stores selling almost entirely to reservation residents; according to the Nebraska Liquor Control Commission, the stores sold about 4.9 million cans of beer in 2010 alone.

In 2017, the four liquor stores lost their licenses, ending Whiteclay's role as the principal alcohol supplier to the Pine Ridge Reservation after years of activism by tribal members and Nebraska advocates.

The CDP was erroneously listed under the name 'Pine Ridge' in the 2000 census; the name was corrected to Whiteclay for the 2010 census.

Whiteclay has no local police force; the nearest Nebraska law enforcement is the Sheridan County sheriff's office in the county seat of Rushville, about 22 miles to the south.