Visit Indy Transforms a Riverfront into an Outdoor Adventure

About Visit Indy 

Visit Indy is Indianapolis’s destination marketing organization, promoting the city and region as a place worth exploring for residents and visitors alike. As a lead partner on the White Riverway Rewards Pass, Visit Indy worked alongside Hamilton County Tourism and Discover White River to connect people to one of central Indiana’s most ambitious outdoor projects.

Discover White River is the multi-organization initiative working to develop the White Riverway, a national park-like network along 58 miles of the White River in central Indiana. Covering more than 10,000 acres of free public parks, nature preserves, and cultural attractions across Indianapolis and Hamilton County, the project is anchored by the White River Vision Plan, a framework released in 2020 to guide a decade-long effort of ecological restoration, economic development, and expanded community access.

Together, their goal is to make a sprawling, multi-county network of parks and natural spaces feel discoverable and connected. The White Riverway’s parks range from urban greenways and rowing venues to wooded nature preserves and paddling launch points, spread across two counties with no single experience tying them together.

The White Riverway Rewards Pass was built to solve exactly that. By launching on Seeker XP, the team created a single, gamified entry point to the entire network. Anyone could sign up for free, save the web app to their phone, and start discovering parks with a GPS check-in and a digital badge waiting at each location.

“We’re excited to offer this pass to get people out on and along the river. The pass couldn’t come at a better time while central Indiana is implementing the White River Vision Plan and has been conducting a decade-long waterways clean-up as a part of the 58-mile river improvement project.”

Brad Beaubien, Senior Director of Destination Development, Visit Indy

How it Worked

Participants joined by visiting discoverwhiteriver.com/pass, signing up for free, and saving the web app to their phone’s home screen. From there, they could browse all 28 participating locations on an interactive map, each with photos, a park description, and a GPS check-in button that activated when they arrived on-site.

Each park visit earned 100 points. Volunteer activities, including river clean-up days and citizen science events along the White River, earned 400 points each. Points accumulated in a digital wallet and could be redeemed for one of three prizes: official park stickers, branded White Riverway t-shirts available for in-person pickup, or $25 gift cards for a kayak or canoe rental at White River Canoe Company in Noblesville or Frank’s Paddlesports Livery at Riverside Park.

The pass ran from April 1 through October 31, 2025, timed to align with the peak outdoor season along the White River. Each of the 28 locations featured a custom national-park-inspired digital badge, a collectible tied to that park’s specific landscape and character.