South Dakota Day 1 - Breweries, Badlands, and Big Ol' Tourist Traps
Today started out in the small town of Belle Fourche north of Rapid City, where I’d gotten my Air BnB for the night before. I started out by getting some great iced coffee at a cute coffee shop called The Green Bean. The cafe was housed in a small green house which gave it a playful cozy vibe. It was such a sweet local gem, and a great place to begin the day.
After caffeinating myself, my first stop for the day was the Tri-State Museum. Belle Fourche is right at the juncture of South Dakota, Wyoming, and Montana, and the museum is dedicated to the shared Western history of the region. The museum began from humble origins as one man from Montana, Roy Williams’, personal collection of Old West memorabilia but soon expanded into an impressive collection of local history, arts, and culture.
The first exhibit on display was a beautiful collection of vintage instruments, including a truly shocking number of accordions, donated from various settlers’ families. The instruments themselves were in impeccable condition, but they also tell a great story of people trying to find beauty and art in a harsh new surrounding.
Next up was a small collection of vintage means of transportation including a bicycle with an oil lamp headlight. It seems pretty wildly dangerous to have a flame attached to a wooden bicycle, but it survived this long so maybe people were just better drivers back then.
Plus bonus creepy mannequin!
In one corner of the museum, there was a full-scale replica of a pioneer home, capturing the day to day life of the settlers of tri-state area. The replica was of an upper class pioneer home which means that it’s probably not all that representative of most homes from that time period but on the plus side all furniture was incredibly fancy and well made. Just look at how over the top that diary on the table is.
My favorite household items included a collection of ornate glassware and a heavy duty looking vintage vacuum cleaner: The vacuum looks like it was designed to beat dirt into submission.
The next displays were focused on the primary industries that sprang up in the region. Highlights included an impressively detailed scale replica of the Black Hills Sugar factory (some people find artistic inspiration in fascinating places) and some really pretty pottery made from clay mined from the Black Hills. It’s weird to think that mining is such back breaking work so often used to provide the raw material for super delicate things.
Next up, there were some displays dedicated to the earliest residents of the region featuring some truly impressive fossils found just a couple miles away from the museum!
While I was initially very surprised to see a display filled with swastikas right after the dinosaurs, these displays actually told a pretty fascinating story, collecting things left behind by German POWs who had worked in camps in the region. I had never known that we had POW camps in the US during WWII, but apparently once camps in Britain became full they started shipping captured Germans over here and at the height of the war there were camps in 46 states! Documentation of all the camps is pretty haphazard, because housing prisoners hadn’t been something the US expected to do so many of them were built pretty quickly. Fully committed to upholding the Geneva convention, living conditions in the camps were by many soldiers’ accounts better than what a lot of these young men just starting out had as civilians in pre-war Germany. Nobody was allowed to be compelled to work, and when they did labor they were actually paid for it and sometimes even able to go out into town to pick up food and drinks and meet girls. Understandably, many Black soldiers in the US were not exactly thrilled that German POWs were able to eat at restaurants that they were not allowed to enter. If that doesn’t speak to the absurdity and hypocrisy inherent in US race relations I don’t know what does. All in all it was a incredible look inside a very under-studied moment in our country’s history.
Continuing the military theme, next up was a collection of firearms through the ages. The guns themselves didn’t do much for me, but some of them had such intricate designs that they also double as works of art so I was into that.
Next up were some more domestic items including a beautiful silver collection which had been gifted to their original owner for her services as a nurse during the Civil war and a truly wild looking safe that I thought was a jet engine for the first couple minutes I saw it.
Next up was a special exhibit dedicated to cow-girls, celebrating the fashion and legacies of all the women who helped settle these Western states over the years. There were photos and various artifacts but the real highlight was definitely all the Western ensembles ranging from the deeply practical to the sublimely ridiculous. Western movies tend to relegate women to the roles of home makers or sex workers, but in reality there were actually a lot more opportunities for women to run businesses and own land out West. It was a brutal place to live, but the flip side was that if you were tough enough to survive you had a lot more freedom than elsewhere in the states at the time.
Next up was a collection of Old West saddles. Not knowing anything about riding horses, it never even occurred to me that there would be different styles of saddles but of course there was a huge amount of variability depending on the rider’s preference, price range, and style.
The next special exhibit was called Picture That and focused on the history of photography in the region. Photos ranged from early Old West daguerreotypes to contemporary tourist photos taken on disposable cameras. Some photos were sweetly amateurish, but many were highly artistic in their content and composition. As for the photo of the man and the buffalo in the top right, I think/hope it was staged, but truly I have no clue and that mystery in some ways is very indicative of the contrasting beauty and danger of the region.
Back to the topic of ranching there was a bench that had been marked with different cattle brands that ranchers in the area had used. There’s a long tradition and symbolism to branding, but at least for me it was definitely a lot nicer seeing them on a bench than a cow.
One of the popular pieces in the collection was a painting by local Davey Barr of riders in the dust called To the Chutes. The painting has captured guest’s imaginations partly because it’s a pretty stunning minimalist panorama but also because there’s supposedly tons of hidden images of “ghost” cowboys and cow skulls in the dust and clouds. I personally can’t make anything out, but I could also never do those magic eye puzzles so I think I’m likely just missing them, but it was still fun to look. Also the artist lived to be 97 and at the time of his death, he was the last person to have lived in Belle Fourche since before it was incorporated as an official town so that was a neat little extra dose of history. We think of American history being long and rich, but it really is so short in the grand scheme of things.
Last but not least, gently swaying above the gift shop was one of artist Dick Termes’ celebrated termespheres, an amazing surreal painted sphere that makes full use of it’s unusual geometry to play tricks with the viewers perspective and suck you in. He’s pretty well known throughout the state, and the museum worker at the gift was very excited that they had acquired one of his spheres saying it was a big get for the museum. It really was very mesmerizing to look at, and I made sure to put visiting his personal gallery on my mom’s and my to-do list while she was visiting me.
On the grounds outside the museum, there was a truly impressive two-story log cabin built in the area originally by a frontiersman named Buckskin Johnny Spaulding in 1876. I don’t think I’d ever seen a log cabin quite so big before so the fact that it was built by hand really blew me away.
The last cool thing on site was a monument to the geographic center of the United States. You may already be thinking “Is that really where the center of the united states is?” and the road to this monument ending up here in Belle Fourche is a bit of a wacky trajectory. The more well known center of the contiguous United States is in fact located in Kansas, where you might expect, but the addition of Hawaii and Alaska dragged the true center of the entire country up to South Dakota. Even still the new center is actually 20 miles north of Belle Fourche, but it’s only marked by a small metal pole on private property. The town felt that the geographic center deserved a more impressive monument, and they figured they were close enough so they went about doing it. The monument consists of a gorgeous granite compass rose made from Black Hills granite by an artist from the town named Monte Amende. Leading up to the compass is a “avenue of flags” comprised of all 50 state flags. It might not be 100% accurate, but it does make for a pretty majestic little tribute.
I moved outward from the center of the United States to the small town of Wall, SD home to only 800 residents and also one of the oldest and most successful tourist traps in the country: Wall Drug. Founded in 1931, Wall Drug began humbly as a struggling small town pharmacy owned by married couple Dorothy and Ted Hustead. The Great Depression was raging and by the owners’ own admission they were really in the middle of nowhere. Then a very simple idea made them a must-stop attraction, they started offering free ice water to travelers. South Dakota is a long, dry state, so while ice water is pretty commonplace now, at the time it essentially turned this little pharmacy into the proverbial oasis in the dessert. They started snagging thirsty travelers by the boatload, and when Mount Rushmore opened only 60 miles away business really started booming. The Hustead’s also started one of the earliest viral marketing campaigns putting up billboards on busy roads over 200 miles away from the store telling travelers just how far close they were to the promise of free ice water. They even put up a sign in the London Underground while on vacation which said “Only 5,160 miles away from Wall Drug”! The signs created an air of mystique and intrigue and people started making the store a must-see pit stop. Over the years, that success has led them to expand into a truly wild mish-mash of anything tourists wanted to see, growing to encompass a restaurant, an art gallery, gift shops, homemade donuts, historical galleries, an arcade, lots of animatronic cowboys, dinosaur sculptures, and naturally lots of stuffed jackalopes. It’s like if you just threw every bit of early 20th century pop culture into a blender and then turned it into a shopping mall. It’s crazy, but in a lovable way, and it does really have to be seen to be believed.
While I was impressed by the sheer size of the building, I still wasn’t expecting when I walked in to be greeted by an entire miniature town:
My first stop inside the world of Wall Art was the Western Art Gallery Cafe, a full service restaurant decorated with one of the largest private collections of Western art in the country featuring works by greats like NC Wyeth and Frederic Remington. It was a really fantastic collection, featuring oil paintings, illustrations, and display cases filled with incredible bronze sculptures all underneath a gorgeous (and super random) stained glass ceiling. I didn’t get a meal there, but it looked like a pretty solid diner that just also happened to be housed in an extraordinary art gallery.
From there, I moved through my first of several souvenir shops. I was actually a little blown away by some gorgeously hand-painted pottery by a company out of Utah called Cedar Mesa, which at least claims to exclusively feature pottery painted by Navajo artists. My friend from South Dakota though did warn me that every place he’s ever seen that sells Native American art says that they’re the 100% authentic real deal and they can’t all be telling the whole truth, but authentic or not, these ones had really pretty colors and patterns.
I also got a kick out of these truly bizarre miniature cowboys made out of welded horseshoes. They were really cute in their own weird way, and I like that someone went through the thought process of “ logistically how would a horseshoe wear a cowboy hat?”
Naturally in the back of the store there was a band of animatronic singing cowboys, which I would say was approximately equally charming and creepy. Somehow between the guys and their piano player I feel like one of these things is not like the others:
Next I went outside to the courtyard area which had a pretty striking bronze sculpture standing well over ten feet tall and capturing a particularly dynamic moment of a rancher riding his horse down treacherous terrain.
Just across from the rancher statue was a totally equally artistic giant jackalope for visitors to get photos of them riding. It was deeply silly, but I loved the strangeness of it all.
Next up was a massive gallery of wall to wall historic photographs, capturing moments big and small from the region’s history in glorious black and white.
My favorites were some stunning vistas captured in vintage photographs of untouched hills and valleys and one hilariously context-free photo of four women in giant hats sitting on a rock outcropping and not looking particularly happy about it.
For a burst of color right at the end, there were also a series of high resolution, up close and personal photographs of local flowers:
Of course by the doorway there was a giant stuffed bear. Someone has to keep out the riff raff.
For budding geologists, there was a fun interactive rock shop where you could “mine” for your own minerals or just purchase them in bulk. For some reason, this store also had a lot of animatronic raccoons who were also miners and would occasionally crack jokes. It was more than a little surreal.
They also had a pretty neat collection of fossils for sale ranging from little shells and pieces of petrified wood to full mounted prehistoric skulls if you wanted to shell out the big bucks. I guess I never really considered that dinosaur bones were something you could casually own and not just things you saw in a museum. I particularly enjoyed one advertisement display (bottom right) of a T-Rex eating a killer whale because there’s no way those animals would have even existed at the same time, so somebody just had that image in their head and by god they made it a reality.
If you needed more pulse-pounding dinosaur action, there is also a gigantic animatronic T-Rex which periodically comes to life and tries to break free from the thankfully electrified fence they have keeping him in check.
Past the dinos, there was a fun virtual shooting gallery where each correct hit of target would trigger an animatronic motion or sound for some good kitchy cowboy fun. I wasn’t exactly a sharpshooter my self, but I did get sucked into the game of trying to see what each target did and I have to say I enjoyed myself.
Next up I went to the bathroom and tipped my hat to the stoic attendant standing guard outside.
Honoring Wall Drug’s humble origins, there was actually a small drug store that doubled as a museum with displays about the history of pharmacies in the country. The design of the museum had a really fun old-timey feel to it, which did make it a little incongruous to see contemporary OTC medicines on such vintage shelves. As an added bonus, my photograph also accidentally captured a fantastic representation of a classic “pre-teen not thrilled to be on a family vacation”.
Across from the pharmacy, there was a full small church. The Husteads were devout Christians so while the little chapel is surrounded by kitsch on all sides, its design is done totally reverentially complete with spectacular stained glass windows. In a lot of ways the chapel perfectly encapsulates Wall Drug’s unique blend of all things high and low in its pursuit to provide the perfect all-purpose travel stop.
After the sacred and the divine, it was back to the tchotchkes. The next souvenir store was dedicated to providing the authentic cowboy experience, by giving visitors a chance to peruse and purchase ten-gallon hats, fine leather cowboy boots with incredible designs, and even a truly insane recliner/ottoman collection with classic Western paintings screen printed on the leather. It was all a tad ridiculous, but the craftsmanship and quality was actually much higher than average souvenir stand (with relatively high prices to match naturally).
By now, I’d circled back to that main avenue of storefronts I saw when I first entered. Now that the shock of the sheer size of the place had worn off a bit, this time I really appreciated all the weird attention to detail and fun art above each store, ranging from detailed Old West dioramas to cartoon-y retro advertisements.
While I admire them striving for historical accuracy, the inclusion of an Old West prostitute was a slightly surprising choice:
To solidify their status as selling knick-knacks, but high quality knick knacks, the next shop was filled with fine jewelry. There was some really incredibly artistic designs made out of precious metals as well as a huge assortment of turquoise, so while I didn’t have the budget nor the inclination to purchase anything I did really love browsing.
Somehow over the years, the noble mythical Jackalope became a de facto mascot of Wall Drug so if you ever needed a dozen or so mounted jackalopes to really make your living your pop, they’ve got you covered:
At this point all my strolling worked up quite an appetite, so when I came across Wall Drug’s retro Ice Cream Parlor and Soda Fountain I was powerless to resist it’s charms. I got a delicious root beer float and a glazed donut, and while it wasn’t exactly the healthiest brunch in the world it really hit the spot. The donuts in particular have become a famous selling point for the drug store, and their reputation is more than well-earned.
Last but not least, I took in one more song from a particularly cock-eyed cowboy band.
To work off the ice cream and donut a bit, I took a little walk around the block. I was enticed by a souvenir shop with a big fake buffalo mounted above the entrance. Walking around, it was definitely more traditional touristy fare but there were enough strange artistic choices like portraits of dogs dressed like fine gentlemen and t-shirts of Bigfoot visiting Mt. Rushmore that I was pretty happy to have stopped there.
One of the things that cracked me up the most, was this flavored water that the marketing team decided was “Clearly Canadian”.
After bidding farewell to the strange world of Wall Drug, it was just a short trip to one of South Dakota’s greatest natural wonders: Badlands National Park. My primary associations with the Badlands were the Bruce Springsteen song, the excellent Terrence Malick film, and a silly Mitch Hedberg joke, so none of those things actually gave me any clue what to expect from the place itself. Entering the park, my jaw dropped to behold the massive 242,756 acres sprawling out forever with big ghostly buttes jutting out of the verdant grasslands in rippling formations. It was slightly overcast and drizzly which gave the great barren rocky expanses an extra haunting beauty. It was hard to believe I was on the same planet let alone in the same country.
I spent hours just driving around and stopping to marvel at the sights all around me. It was hard to take it all in. Native Americans used to hunt in the Badlands dating back to before recorded history, but most of the park remained largely untouched by humans even before it became protected land because it was too dry, windy, and treacherous to make for a good place to settle down. Even before the term Badlands was coined, the local Lakota called it mako sica which literally translates to land bad, so as much as the world’s changed around the park relatively little has changed within it. You really get that wild, untouched vibe looking out over the sweeping vistas, and I can’t imagine how daunting it must have been to early travelers in spite of the beauty. I loved any chance I could get to stand on a high ledge because looking down on the park you really get a sense of its immensity.
Luckily I wasn’t alone for all of my sight seeing, as on one cliff I got to befriend a whole herd of bighorn sheep. How they got all the way up there and what they were planning on doing, I have no clue, but they did look awfully majestic standing as the sole sign of life in the vast wilderness.
After good times in Badlands, I made my way back to Rapid City, where I had some time to kill before my mom’s flight arrived. I decided to get dinner at a uniquely historic brew-pub since I figured it was one cool spot that wouldn’t be her cup of tea. Built in 1915 as gorgeous red brick fire station, the Firehouse Brewing Company would have already been a historic landmark even if it wasn’t also the oldest operating brewery in the entire state of South Dakota. The town soon outgrew the old firehouse, but in 1991 after a bar crawl in Denver a couple buddies figured they could start a brewery of their and restore the firehouse in one fell swoop. The unique decor, good beer, and comfort food was a winning combination, and it’s been a hotspot for food and drink ever since. For beer, I got a flight of their house lager, the firehouse Red, a brown ale, a bourbon barrel aged brown ale, and a fancy beer called the Smokin’ Betty which was a smoked amber ale with a hint of caramel. Everything was great, but naturally the bourbon barrel aged brown was my front runner though the smoked ale was something fun and different to try and the three lighter beers were all easily drinkable. For food, I couldn’t resist getting some pit smoked BBQ, and while everything looked great I had to go with a full 1/2 of a roasted chicken hand rubbed in seasoning and slow roasted. It was spectacularly tender and totally delicious. For sides, I went with garlic mashed potatoes and fried mac and cheese bites which made the whole meal extra decadent. It was fantastic.
After dinner, I went to pick my mom up from the airport. I hadn’t seen her since Christmas, some 6 months before now, so I think this was the longest we’d ever gone without seeing her since I’ve been alive. It was really nice to see her and get to catch up. We were both tired from our respective travels, but we made some time to chat, look at travel photos, and watch some episodes of Nailed It which I figured she’d get a kick out of since she’s actually a tremendous baker in her own right. We laughed together, and then went to bed to rest up for a big day of adventuring tomorrow.
Favorite Random Sightings: a store called Caveman Cigars; A shocking billboard proclaiming “Next stop: Red Ass Rhubarb”; Sleepy Hollow Campground (not sure if associating your campsite with the Headless Horseman is the wisest decision)
Regional Observations: Driving through the Dakotas, there are hills and cheesy billboards as far as the eye can see.
Albums Listened To: Wise Up Ghost by Elvis Costello and the Roots (a strange but super fun collaboration); Wish We Never Met by The Gadjits (produced by the Slackers’ Vic Ruggiero); With Love and Squalor by We Are Scientists (just Cash Cow); With the Beatles by the Beatles (the opposite of a sophomore slump); Within a Mile of Home by Flogging Molly (Irish folk punk)
Joke of the Day:
A proud and confident genius makes a bet with an idiot.
The genius says, "Hey idiot, every question I ask you that you don't know the answer, you have to give me $5. And if you ask me a question and I can't answer yours I will give you $5,000."
The idiot says, "Okay."
The genius then asks, "How many continents are there in the world?" The idiot doesn't know and hands over the $5.
The idiot says, "Now I’ll ask: what animal stands with two legs but sleeps with three?"
The genius tries and searches very hard for the answer but gives up and hands over the $5,000.
The genius says, "Dang it, I lost. By the way, what was the answer to your question?"
The idiot hands over $5.
Songs of the Day:
Such a tight groove
a wry angsty sing-along, this one was big for me in high school
sweet Irish dorks
There’s so few live Beatles clips but this is a damn gem
Oh and Naturally: