Find What You Need at South Dakota’s Wall Drug Store
Ted Hustead had been living in Canova, South Dakota working for other druggists after graduating from pharmacy school. He and his wife, Dorothy had received $3,000 from his fathers will and he was determined to work for himself in a small town that included a Catholic church. He found what he wanted after he and his wife began driving around the states of South Dakota and Nebraska in their Model T, Wall and the drugstore for sale there.
After their families helped them make their decision with prayer and guidance from their religious beliefs they decided to buy the store. After the first few slow months Ted made a promise to his wife, they would move on if they didn’t get more business after five years. By the summer of 1936 the business hadn’t grown much, and with the country in a depression it was no wonder. They had a son who was nine and a new daughter when Dorothy came up with an innovative business strategy.
She had been woken up from naps after jalopies had rattled the house from driving by the nearby Route 16A. She thought that if these people could have a reason to at least come into the store for something free, they might just buy something. And so she had the idea of advertising with catchy slogans on signs along the highway outside the town. The free thing they offered was ice water, and business grew ever since.
People on their way to the National Parks of Yellowstone and the Badlands would have no choice but to drive by the town of Wall in those days. Today the Interstate passes by and the signs are much the same as they were in those early days. Just like the Burma Shave advertisements, they would have a part of a poem on each sign along the highway that would offer free ice water and other things the store sold. People traveling to the Badlands area or the Yellowstone park further along into Wyoming would be thirsty and stop for the chance at free ice water, and would invariably buy things at the small but growing store.
Today the store has little resemblance to that small and struggling drug store, it covers a couple of square blocks of the town and is a large tourist stop for souvenirs and western apparel. The stores are a conglomeration of shops all in the same building that offer a wide variety of souvenirs plus free entertainment, along with your free ice water.
And you can purchase one of the many rare and elusive mounted Jackalope that have been hunted in the area. These almost mythical creatures are seldom seen in the wild but a mounted specimen can be purchased at one of the stores at Wall Drug. Or if your environmentally friendly you can purchase a stuffed toy of one that kids and adults alike can marvel at, the Jackalope is a cross between the stately wild deer and the Jack Rabbit. It’s small size allows it to hide in the wild but it’s horns are a dead giveaway to it’s uniqueness.
I know it’s hard to believe that a deer and rabbit could find themselves attracted to each other but they do have the mounts to prove that the union occurred, and some have been so lucky as to catch this singularly amazing specimen of animal in pictures. There are also a wide variety of interesting and sometimes ridiculous things for sale at the Wall Drug Store. The store has western apparel, western art, gifts, food, jewelery, books and even a rock shop.
The rock shop surprised me even less than some of the other things to find at the store, the Wall Mall has a traveler’s chapel were you can pause for a moment in your traveling to ponder your chosen religion, it is a small chapel at one end of the mall for prayer and religious respites.
You do have to be a bit of a bargain hunter when trying to find that one particular item that is offered at more than one of the stores in the mall. I was looking for a coffee mug and found one of those stainless steel ones that are so common now a days. I found the same mug at the next shop we went to and noted the price, then saw the same mug in several stores, some at the same price but many at different prices. The price ranged from around seven to as much as ten dollars and it kind of surprised me that the stores would vary the price of the same exact thing from one to the next.
But no one said gift shops had to make sense, after all they do sell rabbits with horns. The store is a nice stop and worth the time to walk and browse, there is a nice display of a cowboy orchestra and others who play music for you every fifteen minutes and some other things in the backyard. A Tyrannosaurus Rex in a pen just like Jurassic Park, and other kid related giant sized statues including the six foot Jackalope you can take your child’s picture riding are in the back yard area behind the mall. They have a nice collection of old photos from the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, back when cameras were a new technology.
The whole store is a store and a definite tourist attraction that is worth the stop. The mall gets over a million visitors a year, and they advertise all across the world. If your in the area of the Badlands, stop in the Wall Drug in Wall, South Dakota and browse or just catch a glimpse of that amazing mounted Jackalope.
