Wall Drug is like no other place when it comes to family tourist destinations. It’s quirky. It’s kitschy. And it’s a lot of fun.
Just ask CNN.com and Budget Travel. This week the venerable roadside attraction was named to CNN/Budget Travel list of Seven Tourist Traps You Love. “Back in September, Budget Travel asked for feedback about bona fide, no-holds-barred tourist traps that readers loved anyway,” Budget Travel’s Liz Webber wrote.
And what’s not to love about Wall Drug? It has statues of Wyatt Earp and General Custer. It has a 25-foot T. rex that roars. It has singing mechanical cowboys. It has a stuffed horse you can ctually ride. And it has a mechanical cowboy band that performs pretty much all the time.
Throw in the postcard shop that has its own little writing desks, some of the best original Western art in the country and THE best doughnuts anywhere, and you’ve got a destination that deserves a stop — even if you’ve been to Wall Drug a dozen times.
And to me, it’s also a tribute to the audacity of pharmacist Ted Hustead, who in 1931 turned his stuggling drug store with no tourist appeal into a must-see stop for touirsts en route to the Black Hills and Yellowstone.
As nearby Rapid City works to brand itself — a large downtown fountain is one idea — some locals are scoffing about building an identity around something that has no inherent
significance to the local geography, history or scenery.
But Ted Hustead has proven that you really can make something out of nothing.
“It was here I first discovered what a tourist trap really is!” Corie Lindemann of Coon Rapids, Minn., told Budget Traveler. “Now, it is so camp and nostalgic, it just makes us laugh. Reading the billboards all across the state is still the most interesting thing about the drive to the Black Hills.”
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