Wall Drug is an institution, a Mecca, a South Dakota marvel. If you ask someone if they’ve been to Wall Drug, you get either a blank look of confusion or a gleam in the eye of recognition and a big smile. Wall Drug is Americana at its finest. A Horatio Alger story now well into four generations of a highly successful business and of corporate management within one family that treats its staff as family too.

Wall Drug was started in 1931 in the midst of the Depression when Ted and Dorothy Hustead used all of Ted’s $3,000 inheritance to buy a pharmacy in a failing town just north of the Badlands. It had a good school and a Catholic church, and was a good place to raise children. On the downside it was desolate, still reeling from the failing economy of the late 1920s, and in the middle of nowhere, although just a few miles from the highway that carried tourists to the Badlands. They gave themselves five years to make a go of the business. In the summer of the fifth year, business was still too meager to merit continuing.

Then they came up with the idea of giving away free ice water, of which they had plenty, and placing Burma Shave style signs along the highway like the title to this post and the picture above. There was immediate response and by the end of summer a trickle of tourists had become a flood. The next year they hired eight women to give away water, sell ice cream cones and other tourist paraphernalia.

Today they employ 250 people during tourist season, including a number of international students. One helpful young Irish student from the University of Dublin directed me on to a fellow from Macedonia to pay for my purchases. Hospitality Spoken Here is another Wall Drug slogan, and it’s evident throughout the dozens of stores in the complex.

Wall Drug has literally taken over the town and in high season is the antithesis of Sturgis: good, clean family fun with a huge park for the kids of all ages while the shoppers in the family can explore the extensive shopping mall that extends an entire block. Main Street is filled with cars, and a lot of motorcycles and RVs too, that carry the people to dine, browse (they have a beautiful art gallery filled with Western art), and get their fill of souvenir shopping. Oh, they still have a pharmacy and employ a full-time pharmacist too.

This was my third time visiting Wall Drug. I smile too whenever I think of it and I look forward to the next time when can find a reason to be close enough to stop by.