Wall Drug.....(Day 3)

Wall, South Dakota is just a small town, a spot on the road, with a small pharmacy in Wall Drug.....that is now a famous tourist stop in route to Mt. Rushmore.  It was in existence before the President's heads were carved, but since that completion, has seen more folks come and go than you could imagine.   And that's really all it is, you can find just about anything in that store, that 76,000 square foot Wall Drug Store.  Plus you can eat a fresh home made doughnut and you can indeed get a FREE glass of ice water, just as the owners suggest, which was their big draw to get customers back after the depression years. 

Their website tells of the husband and wife moving to this extremely small town after he graduated from pharmacy school.  Times were hard, but the wife had an idea.  Since so many people would soon be traveling right past their town on the highway heading to see Mt. Rushmore one day, they should put out clever signs on the roadway to draw attention to their drugstore.

Here's a snippet from their story:

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  "Well, now what is it that those travelers really want after driving across that hot prairie? They're thirsty. They want water. Ice cold water! Now we've got plenty of ice and water. Why don't we put up signs on the highway telling people to come here for free ice water? "

(they placed a few signs and the traffic started stopping in like crazy, to that sleepy little 300 person town, all for a glass of ice water)

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  "Well, Ted, " Dorothy said to me, "I guess the ice water signs worked."

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  They surely did work, and we've never really been lonely for customers since then. The next summer we had to hire eight girls to help us, and now that the store is in the the good hands of my son Bill, Wall Drug draws up to twenty thousand people on a good summer day. 

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  Free Ice Water. It brought us Husteads a long way and it taught me my greatest lesson, and that's that there's absolutely no place on God's earth that's Godforsaken. No matter where you live, you can succeed, because wherever you are, you can reach out to other people with something that they need!

A man, his wife, a small town drug store and a dream....that was all it took.

I certainly did stop and get myself a free glass of ice water....although, now, a little different than back in the 1930's, you don't have to wait for the owners to pour you a cup, you can just push the button on the fountain machine.....

You can also still get a cup of coffee for a nickel....that's right, only 5 cents, and it's on the honor system....drop your nickel in the box and grab a cup of joe.