Wall Drug: The Billboard That Wouldn't Stop
Near Wall, South Dakota
About fifty-five miles east of Rapid City, the town of Wall has fewer than eight hundred year-round residents and roughly two million visitors annually, all because of a drugstore and a very stubborn marketing idea. Ted and Dorothy Hustead bought Wall Drug in nineteen thirty-one. Business was dead until Dorothy had an insight: travelers on the hot summer highway between Rapid City and the Badlands were thirsty.
The Husteads put up roadside signs offering free ice water at Wall Drug. Traffic flooded in. They added more signs.
Then more. By the end of the twentieth century, Wall Drug signs had appeared in Antarctica and in Afghanistan. The store itself expanded into a sprawling complex.
Coffee there still costs just five cents. It is one of the more honest roadside attractions in America: it offers exactly what it always promised, a cool place to stop.
