Wall Drug

The Wall Drug Store, located in Wall, South Dakota, is probably the most unusual drug store in the world. Since 1936, it has been a popular tourist attraction in the American heartland. Wall Drug is known for many unlikely things, including signs all over the world in places like Moscow, Russia, and Paris, France, proclaiming the distance to Wall Drug in South Dakota. There is even a sign pounded into the ice at the South Pole reading "Wall Drug, Free Ice Water, 9,333 Miles." Why all the fuss about a drug store in the middle of nowhere? Because Wall Drug has become one of the world's biggest "in-jokes."

Wall Drug is certainly the only reason most people ever visit the dusty town of Wall, South Dakota (population 875), lying between the Badlands and the Great Plains. During the summer season, some 20,000 people visit on a typical day, passing through on nearby I-90. They come to experience a place that feels like it invented kitsch (cheap and sometimes tasteless objects and souvenirs), a tourist trap that is so tacky and unhip that it's actually cool.

On Main Street in Wall, Wall Drug takes up an entire block in the tiny downtown, filling a fifty-thousand-square-foot building. Inside, visitors are confronted with a dazzling assortment of souvenirs for sale: rubber tomahawks, cowboy-themed ash trays, refrigerator magnets depicting nearby Mt. Rushmore, hokey postcards that say "Blind Date in Montana," a "jackalope" hunting license. Restaurant-goers can still get a cup of coffee for a nickel and order a buffalo burger. There is an art gallery at Wall Drug, a western-wear shop featuring Stetson cowboy hats and expensive boots, and exhibits on American Indian culture and history. And, yes, prescriptions can be filled at Wall Drug.

Since it opened during the Great Depression (1929–41; see entry under 1930s—The Way We Lived in volume 2) with its offer of "free ice water," Wall Drug has grown to be a famous location as well as a place stuck in time. That is why people keep coming back.

—Karl Rahder

For More Information

Clark, Jayne. "Kitsch or Quality, Wall Drug Has It." USAToday.com.http://www.usatoday.com/life/travel/leisure/2000/ltl374.htm (accessed February 15, 2002).

Kaplan, Steve. "The Drug Store That Ate South Dakota." Travel-Holiday (June 1989): p. 90.

"Stuff at the South Pole." University of Chicago Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics.http://astro.uchicago.edu/home/web/gd1/misc.html (accessed February 15, 2002).

"Wall Drug." WallDrug.com.http://www.walldrug.com/history.htm (accessed February 15, 2002).