New York City has Fifth Avenue. Los Angeles has Rodeo Drive. Paris has the Champs Elysees. Tokyo has Akihabara. London has Bond Street and Carnaby Street. In South Dakota, they have Wall Drug.
Just a short drive from the remote Badlands National Park in Southwestern South Dakota, Wall Drug is the state’s most famous shop. The small town drugstore made its first step towards fame when it was purchased by Ted Hustead in 1931. Hustead was a Nebraska native and pharmacist who was looking for a small town with a catholic church in which to establish his business. He bought Wall Drug, located in a 231-person town in what he referred to as “the middle of nowhere,” and strove to make a living. Business was very slow until his wife, Dorothy, thought of advertising free ice water to parched travelers heading to the newly opened Mount Rushmore monument 60 miles to the west. From that time on business was brisk. Wall Drug grew from a roadside pitstop into a wild-west themed shopping department store. Wall Drug includes a western art museum and an 80-foot brontosaurus that can be seen right off I-90.
I had seen this place on the Travel Channel, PBS and in postcards. I knew that if I was making my way across South Dakota, Mount Rushmore could not be the only attraction I had to see. En route from the Black Hills and Badlands to Brookings, I made my way off I-90 to see this fabled store. To say that it was campy and silly would be a gross understatement. It was as if Frontierland from Disney World, GUM Mall in Moscow, and Macy’s in NYC got together with Roy Rogers and designed the campiest place this side of Pee-Wee’s Playhouse. You had your cliche buffalo head mounted on the wall alongside old-timey lanterns. To be fair, this place had some qualities of charm and elegance like the stained glass windows and hand carved glass lamps that would win the approval of any collector or interior decorator. My first stop inside Wall Drug was for food, and I was in for some good cooking. Wall Drug is famous for its signature 5 cent cup of coffee but also for it’s epic hot-beef sandwich which is thinly-sliced roast beef (more reminiscent of pot-roast) between two slices of Wonder Bread with mashed potatoes and smothered in gravy. A LOT OF GRAVY! Is it haúte cuisine? Far from it. Is it satisfying? Absolutely. It was not so much a sandwich covered in gravy as much as it was a bowl of gravy with a side of sandwich. For dessert, (I’m surprised I had room after that much sandwich) I had a maple-glazed donut and a massive sticky bun covered in caramel and pecans.
With a belly full of beef and buns, it was time to do some shopping. The one item I knew I had to get my hands was a jackalope. Throughout America, every state a myth or folklegend that is near and dear to their hearts. The Pacific-Northwest has Bigfoot, Texas has Pecos Bill, Minnesota has Paul Bunyan and Hawaii has its mythical gods from Hawaiian lore. In South Dakota, however, it is all about the jackalope. Ok, so it’s a jackrabbit with the antlers of an antelope; not the most original of creatures. But its cute as hell and it combines two of the most fawned over creatures out west, not to mention the mascot of South Dakota State University is the jackrabbit. All over Wall Drug, as well as almost at every souvenir store in South Dakota, you will find an endless supply of jackalope-related paraphernalia. I was tempted to get a jackalope mounted head until I saw that they went for about $90 which was the least expensive one I found. I merely settled on some figurines. As a Rabbitohs fan, I must say I’m surprised South Sydney hasn’t seized on this folklegend. I thought I would be a tad disappointed not to get my hands on a jackalope head. That feeling would be very short-lived once I stepped outside to the back of Wall Drug and saw the most amazing thing on my road trip: a giant jackalope! I saw a small group of tourists posing for photos with this jumbo jackrabbit with antlers. I couldn’t resist climbing up on this huge hare and posing for a picture as if I was mounting a noble steed. As a die-hard Rabbitohs fan, this moment was pretty awesome. If only Reggie Rabbit could see now…
