What) If you’ve
ever driven within 200 miles of it then you know it’s coming.
Like the bygone Burma-Shave ads, Wall Drug proclaims its
existence up and down the interstate with rhyming, staggered
highway signs that are like easy clues in a shopping scavenger
hunt.
From its
humble beginnings as a drugstore offering free ice water to
Depression-era drivers, it grew to engulf the entire town of
Wall and corner the knickknack market with seemingly endless
interconnected storefronts selling every imaginable inventory.
Today the pie is stellar and the water’s still free. (1)
Where) Wall
is 55 miles east of Rapid City along I-90, just outside the
boundary of Badlands National Park.
Why) When
we were driving back from another trip we drove by 100
miles of Wall Drug billboards before taking a turn away from
Wall because of an impending blizzard. This time I have
scheduled a drive by all 200 miles of billboards and a
stop in Wall. How can all this hype possibly be worth it?
You probably
know what's coming too. I spent the 200 mile drive to Wall
photographing as many of their billboards as I could.
You can
probably also work out that Pam would not stop the car for
this purpose so all of these images were taken from a
moving vehicle.
What you might not know is that
I have slightly edited each of these photographs.
I increased the contrast
on the billboard part of the image to brighten the
colours and make it stand out from the background.
The
post-winter/pre-spring landscape was really this bleak
though and in a way this contrast enhanced the attraction
the Wall ads exerted.
If you are tiring of these
scenes by now then know that there were 13 other ones that I
decided not to include and there were many more ...
... that I
failed to photograph at all. Anyway, this is by far my
favourite of the bunch. Now it is time to see how well
these ads worked for ...
... Wall Drug's bottom line. I
ended up buying this three dimensional poster for myself for
reasons I won't be going into. I also bought ...
... this strange bobblehead as
a gift for my father.
Pam purchased
this angel bell and that
was it. There was lots of other merchandise but nothing
else that even tempted us.