How a free glass of water turned a dying South Dakota drugstore into a road trip legend

It all started with a sign and free ice water

Wall Drug Store sits in a South Dakota town of about 800 people, out on the plains just north of Badlands National Park. The complex covers 76,000 square feet and takes up most of downtown Wall.

Two million people make the stop every year, with up to 20,000 showing up on a single summer day. This isn’t a mall with separate shops.

One family has owned and run the whole thing for four generations, and the story of how a failing Depression-era pharmacy became one of America’s most famous road trip stops is stranger than anything you’d expect.

Ted and Dorothy’s $3,000 gamble in the middle of nowhere

In December 1931, Ted and Dorothy Hustead used a $3,000 inheritance to buy Wall’s only drugstore. Ted himself described the town as sitting in “the geographical center of nowhere,” and the numbers backed him up.

Wall had about 326 residents. Business crawled for five years straight through the Great Depression.

Then in the summer of 1936, Dorothy had an idea. She suggested putting highway signs up offering free ice water to hot, tired drivers passing through. Ted drove out and posted them.

By the time he got back, customers were already lining up at the door.

The 80-foot dinosaur that kept the crowds coming

When Interstate 90 bypassed Wall in the late 1960s, the Husteads faced losing their traffic overnight. Their answer was concrete, 50 tons of it.

They hired sculptor Emmet Sullivan to build an 80-foot-long brontosaurus next to the freeway, and Sullivan was no amateur.

He also built the dinosaurs at Rapid City’s Dinosaur Park and the Christ of the Ozarks in Arkansas. The brontosaurus went up with light bulbs in its eyes so drivers could spot it at night.

It still stands there today, impossible to miss from the interstate.

Climb the giant jackalope out back

The Backyard is Wall Drug’s outdoor area, open through the summer months, and the star of it is a giant saddled jackalope made of fiberglass. You can climb up and sit on it for photos.

A six-foot rabbit on wheels gives you another shot nearby.

There’s also a covered wagon, a mini replica of Mount Rushmore, and enough to keep kids occupied for a solid stretch of time.

The whole area has the feel of a place that grew by adding one wild thing at a time, which is more or less exactly what happened.

The T-Rex behind the electric fence

Step inside the Backyard building and you’ll find a life-size animatronic T-Rex waiting behind a fence rigged to look electric. Every few minutes, its head rises, it lets out a roar, and smoke rolls from its nostrils.

The effect is theatrical and loud, and it works. Kids freeze.

Adults get their phones out.

It’s one of the most talked-about single things at Wall Drug, and it shares the building with historical exhibits and artwork that give you something to look at while you wait for the next roar.

Splash pads, gem panning, and 1,000 old photos

The Backyard building also runs the Wall Drug Mining Company, where kids can pan for gems and dig for treasure. There’s a shooting gallery arcade and a Jumping Jets splash pad for cooling off on hot days.

Along the walls, more than a thousand historical photographs of South Dakota run from the 1870s through the 1930s, covering homesteaders, early towns, and the landscape before the roads came through. You can wander past them while the kids dry off.

300 original paintings, free to see while you eat

The Western Art Gallery Dining Rooms hold over 300 original oil paintings, and the collection runs deep.

Works by N.C. Wyeth, Harvey Dunn, Dean Cornwell, and Harold Von Schmidt hang on the walls, and the whole thing ranks as one of the finest private collections of Western and illustration art in the country.

Ted Hustead started it. His son Bill expanded it significantly through the 1970s.

The 530-seat restaurant means you can sit down for a meal and spend the whole time looking at paintings without paying a dime for admission.

The chapel built from salvaged church windows

Tucked between the shopping areas, the Traveler’s Chapel opened in 1984 after Bill Hustead built it in the style of a Trappist monk chapel from the 1850s near Dubuque, Iowa. The walls are South Dakota brick.

The ceiling is cedar. The floor is red oak.

Five stained-glass windows came from a turn-of-the-century church in Pierre, South Dakota, salvaged before the building was lost.

The chapel holds a service every Sunday, which means on any given summer weekend, a quiet service is running a few steps from the gift shop.

The billboard campaign that circled the globe

Wall Drug’s highway signs peaked at over 3,000 during the 1960s.

Today, about 300 hand-painted billboards line a roughly 650-mile stretch of I-90 from Minnesota to Billings, Montana, all made by South Dakota billboard artists.

During World War II, soldiers started posting Wall Drug signs on their own, from London to the Pacific islands, and the tradition spread.

Free ice water is still pumped by the thousands of gallons on hot days, cooled by 1.5 tons of man-made ice.

Active military still get free coffee and donuts, a holdover from when the Air Force ran Minuteman missile silos nearby.

Four generations and a governor’s tribute

Ted’s son Bill joined the business in 1951 and built it into a cowboy-themed destination, adding the Western Mall Frontier Town in the 1970s to look like the main street of an Old West town.

Bill’s son Rick now runs Wall Drug as the third generation, and Rick’s daughter Sarah works there too, bringing the count to four.

When Ted Hustead died in 1999, South Dakota’s governor opened his State of the State address the next day by honoring him. That’s a long way from a struggling pharmacy with 326 neighbors.

Badlands and missiles are right down the road

Wall puts you within reach of some serious South Dakota landmarks. Badlands National Park is just a short drive south, with the Pinnacles Entrance close to town.

The park’s canyon landscapes, grasslands, and fossil sites can fill a full day on their own.

About 10 minutes away, the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site preserves a Cold War-era underground missile control center you can tour.

Rapid City and Mount Rushmore are each about an hour west, which makes Wall a natural stopping point in the middle of a bigger road trip.

Visit Wall Drug Store in Wall, South Dakota

You can walk into Wall Drug for free any day of the year. The store sits at 510 Main Street in Wall, right off I-90 at exit 110.

The Backyard attractions run during summer months only, so if the T-Rex and the jackalope are on your list, plan for the warmer months. Admission to the store and art gallery is free.

Parking is available around the property.

Wall Drug keeps daily hours year-round, so check the official website before you go for current seasonal times.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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