Although it is just a hokey tourist trap in South Dakota, Wall Drug has become one of the most widely-known places in the west, thanks to a savvy marketing campaign.
For those who don't know, I live in a converted campervan and travel around the country, posting photo diaries of places that I visit. I am currently in South Dakota.
In 1931, Nebraska native Ted Hustead purchased a corner drug store in the tiny little town of Wall, South Dakota. With a population of 326, Wall was a flyspeck of a place that, people said, was “the geographical center of nowhere”, and only existed as a stop for the Chicago and North Western Railroad Line. But it had a Catholic Church, which is what attracted the deeply religious Hustead and his family: they’d be able to attend Mass every day.
Over the next five years, Wall Drug eked out a bare existence through the Great Depression by catering to the townsfolk and the surrounding rural areas. Although the modern I-90 Interstate Highway didn’t yet exist, once the economy improved there was steady traffic on the country road that passed through Wall, mostly wealthy tourists from the east who were on their way to visit the Badlands or Mount Rushmore.
That gave Ted’s wife Dorothy an idea—why not put up a sign on the roadway offering free ice water to these travelers? This was of course something that every drugstore of that era offered, but the Husteads hoped that the travelers passing by would be tired and thirsty during their long hot drive through South Dakota’s flat dusty prairies, and would welcome the opportunity to stop for a while.
And it worked. Within a short time the drugstore was regularly packed with tourists, and the Husteads began expanding to accommodate them. Soon the drugstore was accompanied by a motel, then restaurants, then western-themed souvenir shops. Humorous billboards appeared along the roadway which advertised the drugstore and its free ice water. Over the years, especially after Interstate 90 was begun in 1958, the number of billboards grew, and they started appearing as far away as Michigan and Montana. (Today, there are advertising signs for Wall Drug in places like England, Kenya, and India.)
Then in 1965 came a serious threat: the Highway Beautification Act was passed by Congress, which required permits for each and every highway billboard sign and required all un-permitted signs to be taken down. It would have been a death knell for Wall Drug as well as other small motels, tourist shops and others who depended upon free highway advertising to attract customers. Fortunately for them, the law was passed but no money was appropriated for enforcing it, and in the end nobody was obliged to remove their signs.
In the 1970s, the US Air Force installed dozens of Minuteman ICBM nuclear-missile silos in South Dakota, and the Husteads saw another marketing opportunity. They began offering free donuts to the Air Force and other military personnel who had to continuously travel between Ellsworth Air Force Base and the isolated missile sites. And Wall Drug still continues that tradition.
Today, Wall Drug has grown into what is, essentially, a shopping mall, and has become the primary industry for the 800 residents of Wall. The pharmacy is still there—the only one within 50 miles. But alongside the drugstore are 22 storefronts containing everything from cowboy boot workshops to a bookstore to video game arcades to an art gallery, with an 80-foot cement Brontosaurus standing outside. The walls are covered with taxidermied animals as well as animatronics. There’s even a Catholic chapel. Through word of mouth and through its iconic roadway signs scattered all over the west (reportedly there is at least one Wall Drug billboard in every state in the US), Wall Drug attracts around 2 million visitors each year.
And the ice water is still free.
Some photos from a visit.