More Than Pharmaceuticals In This Drug Store

Where is Bien Hoa, Vietnam? Exactly 10,659 miles southwest of Wall Drug, if you believe the advertising. And there’s plenty of it. The Hustead family, which owns and operates Wall Drug, has plastered up signs all over the world, but most are on the stretch of Interstate 90 between Rapid City and Sioux Falls, S.D. You can’t miss the exit. Just turn off at the 80-foot-long green dinosaur.

Wall Drug isn’t your average drug store. It’s 300 times tackier and 300 times bigger. Actually, dispensing pharmaceuticals is a relatively small part of the operation. The place is basically a 520-seat restaurant, travelers’ chapel, western art museum and gift shop all rolled into one gargantuan, glorified truck stop.

But it’s probably the best defended glorified truck stop in the world. Wall is surrounded by 50 Minutemen silos, each with a 70,000-pound missile that can deliver a nuclear warhead 6,300 miles, roughly the range of the Wall Drug advertising campaign.

I arrived at Wall just in time for breakfast. Lining one side of the restaurant were a dozen or so septuagenarians wrapping their gums around cups of Wall Drug’s famous five-cent coffee. (There’s nothing famous about the taste of the coffee, just the price. And the same goes for the famous ice water, which is free.) I walked past them on my way into the dining room, where I sat near a friendly couple who introduced themselves as Chris and Martha.

It didn’t take much prodding to learn that Chris was in charge of Wall’s school district, and Martha was the town’s entire medical department. She’s the lone nurse (there’s no doctor) in this hamlet of 800. During the summer, she mostly treats tourists for minor ailments. Especially urinary infections. Seems those Dads behind the wheel racing their families across the country just don’t stop to rest enough. And they don’t drink enough water.

“Drinking plenty of water is the key,” Martha asserted. “Put that in your article.”

My timing at Wall Drug was pretty good. Founder Ted Hustead was there on his once-a-week excursion from the nursing home. At 94, he still didn’t mind reciting his tale of how the company was started. It was a slightly awkward chat, though, because I was still trying to eat breakfast, and Ted was a bit hard of hearing, so I needed to shout, and little chewed bits of my breakfast would land right on Mr. Hustead. Luckily, he didn’t seem to notice.

In reference to the famous Wall Drug advertising, Ted said his wife, Dorothy (who passed away in November 1995), told him to go out and put up a few signs. But don’t go overboard, she warned him.

“Well?” I said as loud as possible, wondering if the story was over.

“Well, what?” Ted said, “I didn’t listen to her. I think that’s obvious.”

Now Ted’s son, Bill, runs the show, but his grandsons, Rick and Teddy, take care of most day-to-day duties.

After breakfast, Teddy, who specializes in Wall Drug’s attractions, took me over to see his latest purchase: a T-Rex. This automated carnivore runs on compressed air and is kept inside a sturdy faux-rock cage, but with the red flashing lights, smoke and dinosaur roar, it can be quite menacing.

In addition, the drugstore had a fiberglass Jackalope, a 6-foot-tall rabbit, 1,600 pairs of cowboy boots, a “Dances with Wolves” teepee, and an animated, almost life-sized Cowboy Orchestra that the brochure claims, “keeps crowds in stitches.” This is not to be confused with the Chuckwagon Quartet, another musical act, also (somewhat) animated. Both of these groups “come to life” every 15 minutes during tourist season.

I didn’t meet all the Husteads before I left, but I learned about them later in the book-sized brochure I was given. Rick’s wife was described this way: “Pat, a South Dakota native, is the manager of one of the more profitable and complicated departments at Wall Drug, the Soda Fountain.”

The brochure also discussed Ted Hustead’s “greatest lesson,” which is: “Wherever you are, you can reach out to other people with something that they need.” I can only hope he wasn’t referring to the camouflage toilet paper available in the Wall Drug gift shop.