What looked like a desperate attempt to save a dying business turned Ted Hustead’s drugstore in Wall, South Dakota, into one of America’s most famous roadside attractions thanks to a clever marketing strategy: free ice water.
In 1931, Ted Hustead, a young pharmacist, and his wife, Dorothy, used their inheritance to purchase a drugstore as the country struggled to get through the Great Depression, when unemployment and poverty soared while businesses and industrial production plunged.
For about five years, the business was clearly struggling.
Wall was a small prairie town in South Dakota with a population of just over 300, so the couple began thinking of a smart way to advertise their business.
“The first few months went by and business didn’t improve,” Ted Hustead shared as cited by their official website. “‘I don’t mind being poor,’ Dorothy said to me. ‘But I wonder if we can use our talents to their fullest here in Wall.’ When Dorothy spoke of talents, my heart sank. My wife had a teaching degree and had taught literature in a Sioux Falls high school. Was I being fair, making her work in this prairie drugstore? But the next minute Dorothy said, ‘We shouldn’t get down, Ted. I’m sure we can use our abilities fully here. We can make this place work!’”
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Dorothy told her husband about her free ice water idea to attract passing motorists.
“‘Well, now what is it that those travelers really want after driving across that hot prairie? They’re thirsty. They want water,” Dorothy told her husband. “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?”
Dorothy also suggested a few lines for the signs that read, “Get a soda . . . Get a root beer . . . turn next corner . . . Just as near . . . To Highway 16 & 14. . . Free Ice Water. . . Wall Drug,” inspired by the famous Burma-Shave highway ads.
At that time, Ted, driven by frustration, thought that they had nothing to lose and decided to try his wife’s suggestion.
In 1936, he turned the idea into a highway sign campaign, with a local high school boy painting the words onto wooden boards and spacing the signs so drivers could read the message line by line as they passed.
Hustead’s marketing trick worked, as customers began lining up for free ice water and buying ice cream, souvenirs, soda and medications.
“For hours we poured gallons of ice water, made ice cream cones and gave highway directions,” Ted Hustead recalled. “When the travelers started on their way again, refreshed and ready for new adventures, they gave us hearty thanks.”
Now, what was once an unexpected idea had transformed the tiny-town drugstore into the internationally famous Wall Drug.
The clever strategy has attracted millions of visitors over the years, with up to 20,000 people flocking to Wall Drug on a busy summer day.
To this day, the South Dakota roadside attraction continues its famous free ice water tradition.
Related: In 1978, Southern Living printed L.H. Wiggins’s hummingbird cake recipe; it was voted the magazine’s favorite in 1990 and is the most requested in its history
