Shimmering ice water oasis. (Photo courtesy of Wall Drug)

Wall Drug Store

Wall, South Dakota

The name Wall Drug strikes a familiar note of horror with anyone who's driven the interstate system west of the Appalachians or east of the Rockies with a back seat full of screaming children. "Mommy, Daddy, lookit the funny signs! Can we stop huh please huh can we just for a minute puh-leeeeeze?" Those who have been denied this experience may still have heard of Wall Drug if they've visited the North or South Poles, for even at the ends of the earth, Wall Drug has posted signs advertising the mileage to itself.

Wall Drug a half a century ago.

Wall Drug may be the roadside wonder best known to people who've never been to America. Paris Metro riders have seen Wall Drug signs. So have rail commuters in Kenya, bus passengers in London, and visitors to the Taj Mahal. Wall Drug spends thousands each year to maintain some of these signs, but most are the impromptu erections of former Wall Drug visitors. GI's from South Dakota put up signs in Germany, Korea and Vietnam.

Every traveler who has stopped at Wall Drug in the past 60-odd years has been given a free Wall Drug sign, so that they might also join the vast Wall Drug self-promotion fraternity.

Wall Drug is a sprawling tourist mall that occupies the majority of downtown Wall, which used to be known by locals as "the geographical center of nowhere." That was before Ted Hustead came along.

The Lure of Ice Water

The late Ted Hustead.

Ted was a Nebraska native who moved to Wall and opened a tiny drug store in 1931. Five years later, it was still a tiny drug store. Dorothy, Ted's wife, thoughtthat the travelers driving past their store must be thirsty, and suggested that Ted put up a sign outside of town advertising free ice water at Wall Drug.

Ted thought it was a silly idea, but he was desperate and put up the sign. By the time he got back, thirsty tourists were already lining up for their free ice water. They've been stopping ever since.

Wall Drug was managed through the 1970s to the '90s by Bill Hustead, Ted's son, and under his guiding hand it grew considerably.

"I was embarrassed when I was in high school," Bill remembered. "All those signs, and when you arrived it was just an ordinary small town store. It was my crusade to develop the store into something special." He did. Wall Drug still featured a tiny pharmacy (the only one within 500 square miles) but its peripheral amusements took over and extended across several blocks.

The late Bill Hustead.

Wall Drug continues as the principal industry in Wall. It employs nearly a third of the town's residents. Wall has more public swimming pools per citizen than any other town in the world, thanks to Wall Drug. If every Wall resident decided to rent a motel room in town on the same night, there'd still be over 400 vacancies.

A Billboard Eulogy

Over a million people stop at Wall Drug every year -- 20,000 on a good summer day. These adventurers are lured by the tantalizing Wall Drug billboards, thousands of which once beckoned from roadsides coast to coast and from Canada to Mexico. Once Ted got it into his head that signs could draw customers, he went billboard-crazy. Painted wood signs proclaiming "Have You Dug Wall Drug?" and "Wall I'll Be Drugged" appeared in every state in the union. "Dad always insisted on painted wood," Bill remembers. "Painted wood isn't as fun to shoot as enameled metal."

Wall Drug's days of billboard glory ended in 1965, when Lady Bird Johnson bulldozed her nationwide Highway Beautification Act through a cowardly Congress. After publicly proclaiming that road signs were "junk," she began a one-woman terror campaign of billboard-razing that continues to this day. Wall Drug's lovable signs have been among her most notable victims.

Fortunately, Bill Hustead -- who still referred to the Highway Beautification Act as "an act of mindless government" -- got himself appointed Chairman of the South Dakota Transportation Commission and waged a personal battle to protect his signage. The results were mixed; today, you'll still see Wall Drug signs along South Dakota's highways and in numerous countries overseas, but almost nowhere else.

The death of Dorothy Hustead in 1995, then 1999's double whammy that took Wall Drug founder Ted Hustead, 96, and Bill Hustead, 72, were a great blow to the Wall community. Ice water might never again taste as sweet. But Ted's grandson Rick assumed management, and Wall Drug continues to prescribe over-the-top fun for vacationers.

Mini-Mount Rushmore and a Rabbit on Wheels

Wall Drug's famous free ice-water well is still out in the Wall Drug Back Yard, where it pumps several thousands of gallons of water cooled by one and one-half tons of man-made ice on a good summer's day. The Back Yard also houses a bucking bronco, a giant, fiberglass jackalope, a six-foot- tall rabbit on wheels, a replica Indian village that comes to life (sort of) at the drop of a quarter, and a miniature Mount Rushmore photo opportunity. A sign next to the miniature cautions, "Please do not climb on faces."

Many animatic creations inhabit the nooks and crannies that surround the shops inside Wall Drug. Gyrating bears overhang a doorway leading to a boutique that sells snake ashtrays and stuffed jackalopes. Above the bears, a lively "Spirit of '76" trio comes to life every 15 minutes. The famous Wall Drug "Chuck Wagon Four" -- a band of cowboys the Husteads smuggled out of a Mays Department Store window in Denver -- performs regularly. It's just down the hall from the Traveler's Chapel, a replica of an 1850's Trappist monastery, which is right next to Wall Drug's immense postcard store, specializing in Wall Drug postcards too numerous to count.

Across from this stands the "Pharmacy Museum" -- a replica of the original Wall Drug -- displaying the machine Bill Hustead's grandfather used to make suppositories. And across from this is an indoor cafeteria, built around the first tree planted in Wall, which continues to grow through a hole in the roof. Coffee at Wall Drug is still five cents a cup.

The Battle Goes On

When I-90 bypassed Wall in the late 1960s (while Lady Bird's husband was President), the Husteads did not sit back and wait for their business to die. Instead, they erected a fifty-ton, 80-foot-long dinosaur next to the freeway reminding travelers that Wall Drug was still open and it still expected them to stop and pay homage. It worked; business is better than ever.

Everybody, it seems, still stops at Wall Drug.

Also see: Video: Scenes from The Yard