Bill did. If every Wall resident decided to rent a motel room on the same night, there'd still be over 400 vacancies.
But that was before Ted Hustead came along.

Five years later it was still a tiny drug store. Signs pointing the way to Wall Drug have been spread all over the world. Wall Drug still has a tiny pharmacy -- the only one within 50 miles -- but its peripheral amusements have taken over and now extend across a labyrinth of connected buildings. Notice: Read Important Information Regarding COVID-19. Please click below to consent to the use of this technology while browsing our site. RoadsideAmerica.comYour Online Guide to Offbeat Tourist Attractions .

I-95's Tijuana-style celebration of kitsch at the Carolina border. Atlas Obscura and our trusted partners use technology such as cookies on our website to personalise ads, support social media features, and analyse our traffic. Wall used to be known by locals as "the geographical center of nowhere." Visit reports, news, maps, directions and info on Wall Drug Store in Wall, South Dakota. The store provides a variety of items, such as honey and sauces, bobble-headed animals, cups, mugs and shot glasses, toy guns and home decoration products.

Although Wall, South Dakota, is the year-round home of only 800 people, there’s a wide variety of shopping opportunities supported by the two million visitors to Wall and the world-famous Wall Drug each year. The Back Yard also shelters a variety of photo-ops, including a furry six-foot-tall rabbit on wheels, a mini-Mount Rushmore, and a saddled, fiberglass giant jackalope (only slightly smaller than the world's largest). tourist attractions and odd sights in South Dakota. A life-size T-rex roars every few minutes from behind a Jurassic Park-style electric fence, guarding a long hallway gallery that displays Wall Drug's many framed awards and press clippings. Wall Drug is the American roadside wonder best known to people who've never been to America. A six-ton, 12-foot-tall concrete prairie dog, touted as the largest in the world. Prehistoric roadside attractions line the highways of Oregon to Massachusetts. The famous Wall Drug "Chuck Wagon Quartette" -- a band of cowboys the Husteads smuggled out of a Mays Department Store window in Denver -- sings Tumbling Tumbleweeds every 20 minutes. (As if Wall Drug needs validation from the media.) They still give out ice water too. Wall Drug is the principal industry in the town of Wall. They do. South Dakota's oldest operating brewery is housed inside a historic firehouse. It's a sprawling tourist mall that occupies most of downtown and employs nearly a third of its population. All rights reserved. Old school since 1931. Credits, Media/Business Inquiries The idea: ice water. Consider supporting our work by becoming a member for as little as $5 a month. "I was embarrassed when I was in high school," Bill said. Offer subject to change without notice. This rare female version of the Muffler Man has its clothes removed each summer to signal the start of pool season. "Dad always insisted on painted wood," his son Bill once told us.

It was my crusade to develop the store into something special."

Coffee at Wall Drug is still five cents a cup, and the kitchen makes its own donuts and fudge. Layer by Layer: A Mexico City Culinary Adventure, Tales From the Museum: The Museum of the City of New York, What It Takes to Dismantle and Move a 40-Foot Whale Skeleton, Reviving America's Forgotten Boozy, Fruity Election Cake, One of Dracula's Often Overlooked Inspirations Is the Indian Vetala, In the Andes, the Fear of Oppressors Manifests as the Gruesome Pishtaco, What It's Like to Stress-Test Berlin's Brand New, Much Maligned Airport, In Naples, Praying With Skulls Is an Ancient Tradition, Inside a Domed Pyramid With Astounding Acoustics and a History of Miracles, See the Mysterious Horned Helmet of Henry VIII, Searching for Home and Connection Through Typewritten Poetry, The Female Shark Spotter Protecting Réunion Island’s Surfers, Take a Jurassic Road Trip To These 13 Dinosaur Parks.

The t-shirts... My second off-season visit here for doughnuts and coffee to go. So have rail commuters in Kenya, bus passengers in London, and visitors to the Taj Mahal. I'd heard the hype and seen the signs during our drive through SD. When I-90 bypassed Wall in the late 1960s, the Husteads (now in their fourth generation) did not sit back and wait for their business to die. No purchase necessary. Ted ran the place until the 1970s when Bill took over, and under Bill's guiding hand it grew considerably. RoadsideAmerica.comYour Online Guide to Offbeat Tourist Attractions. But to the insiders, we know... We love visiting Wall Drugs when we are on our annual trip to Sturgis. And across from this is an indoor cafeteria. "All those signs, and when you arrived it was just an ordinary small town store. See. But it was Ted’s wife Dorothy who hit upon the idea that changed not just the drugstore, but the entire 231-person town of Wall. Wall Drug started simply enough when Ted Hustead purchased the South Dakota town of Wall’s drugstore in 1931. Attraction status, hours and prices change without notice; call ahead! By the time that he got back, thirsty tourists were lining up for their free ice water. Wall Drug Store, based in Wall, S.D., is an online store providing a wide range of items, including books, jackalopes, caps and hats, and T-shirts. Over a million people stop at Wall Drug every year -- 20,000 on a good summer day. © 2020 Atlas Obscura. From then on Wall Drug grew under its own strange power, adding a bizarre assortment of fiberglass animals, including the iconic Wall Drug jackalope, giant dinosaurs, and more tchotchkes then you can shake a stick at, including an array of taxidermied jackalopes. Mechanical creations inhabit the nooks and crannies that surround the shops inside Wall Drug, which mimic storefronts in a Wild West town. Wall Drug Store in Wall, South Dakota (United States). It's a sprawling tourist mall that occupies most of downtown and employs nearly a third of its population. Offer available only in the U.S. (including Puerto Rico). Every square inch of Wall Drug's knotty pine interior is covered with stuffed animal heads, totem poles, carved statues, and mechanical money-sucker machines -- a wealth of eye-clutter that would put the average Cracker Barrel franchise to shame. #3 Wall South Dakota Wikivoyage Wall, South Dakota, the geographic center of nowhere, is probably known best to cross-country travellers for its main attraction, Wall Drug. This place has everything for the person who has a wife that loves to buy gifts for her family back home. So in an attempt to attract business, Dorothy Hustead put up a sign advertising free ice water to parched tourists on their way to the attraction. Explore Wall Drug in Wall, SD as it appears on Google Maps as well as pictures, stories and other notable nearby locations on VirtualGlobetrotting.com. All rights reserved. Like us on Facebook to get the latest on the world's hidden wonders. Koozies and coolers have made ice water portable, but everyone driving through South Dakota still stops at Wall Drug. Wall Drug now has billboards some 500 hundred miles away–and many thousands of miles further, if you count those put up by fans–announcing the impending tourist trap all the way in Minnesota to the East and Billings, Montana to the West. Waited in line for a few minutes right after it opened, got my donuts from the cheery cashier, then my 5 cent coffee, and left. Once Ted got it into his head that signs could draw customers, he went billboard-crazy. Wall Drug started simply enough when Ted Hustead purchased the South Dakota town of Wall’s drugstore in 1931. Map. They've been stopping ever since. (It is unclear when or why jackalopes attained such iconic status for Wall Drug). We've visited the Back Yard on many trips since childhood, and it's evolved from a dirt lot of wonders to a paved mall courtyard of wonders (but thumbs down on the tidy replacement of the old jaw-less Singing Sam the Gorilla Man, which must've finally decayed into a rotting pile of scraps and fur). Every weekday we compile our most wondrous stories and deliver them straight to you. No portion of this document may be reproduced, copied or revised without written permission of the authors. "Painted wood isn't as fun to shoot as enameled metal" (Both he and Ted passed away in 1999). To outsiders who haven't made the drive, it means nothing.

Dorothy, Ted's wife, thought that the people driving past must be thirsty, and suggested that Ted put up a sign on the highway advertising free ice water at Wall Drug. Wall Drug (Google Maps). Among roadside attractions, Wall Drug is an icon: the granddaddy of tourist traps. Building a "big, beautiful wall" between the US and Mexico was the signature promise of President Donald Trump's 2016 election campaign. Wall Drug is near Badlands National Park... Wall Drug is near Badlands National Park... Wall Drug, South Dakota | Amanda | FANDOM powered by Wikia Create and Save Your Own Crazy Road Trip! Start here.Use RoadsideAmerica.com's Attraction Maps to plan your next road trip. The largest retailer of seashells in the world. Wall Drug is the principal industry in the town of Wall. Sixty miles west of Wall, Mount Rushmore had just opened. It was a big hit. It sounded silly -- at the time every drug store gave away free ice water -- but Ted put up the sign anyway. So what draws people in year after year? Wall Drug (Google Maps). Advertised on gigantic billboards for hundred of miles to the west and east on Interstate 90, the gargantuan drug store has put Wall on the nation's map. I was super excited to visit thinking there would be lots of souvenirs and some lil tasty treats. Some 20,000 cups of it a day. We only know this because Wall Drug boasts about it on its billboards. It's just down the hall from the Traveler's Chapel, a replica of an 1850s Trappist monastery. Instead, they hired Emmet Sullivan, who had built Christ of the Ozarks and Rapid City's Dinosaur Park, to erect a fifty-ton, 80-foot-long dinosaur with light bulb eyes next to the freeway -- just to remind travelers that Wall Drug was still open and still expected them pay homage. Like Atlas Obscura and get our latest and greatest stories in your Facebook feed. It is a shopping mall consisting of a drug store, gift shop, restaurants and various other stores. To learn more or withdraw consent, please visit our cookie policy. They must've spend a whole lot of money on all those billboards along the highway. One of America’s oldest and spookiest hotels, thanks to the residency of ghosts, dead presidents, and Alfred Hitchcock. Wall had always been a small outpost in the middle of nowhere, but by the time Wall Drug opened the town had just become somewhere – or near somewhere at least. Follow us on social media to add even more wonder to your day. If you are a honeymooner, veteran, priest, hunter, or truck driver, you can also get free coffee and donuts. Painted wood signs proclaimed "Wall I'll Be Drugged" and "Wall Drug Or Bust" in every state of the union (At their peak in the 1960s, Wall Drug had over 3,000 highway signs). It was not always so. Wall Drug's famous free ice-water well is out in the Wall Drug Back Yard, where it can pump several thousands of gallons of water cooled by 1.5 tons of man-made ice on a hot July afternoon. Wall Drug Store, often referred to simply as "Wall Drug," is a tourist attraction located in the city of Wall, South Dakota. Over a million people stop at Wall Drug every year -- 20,000 on a good summer day. Hundreds of them line the east-west approaches along Interstate 90 in South Dakota, tantalizing travelers with offers of five cent coffee and free ice water, and proclaiming Wall Drug: as seen on Good Morning America; ...as seen in People, ...as seen in Better Homes and Gardens, etc.