If You Build It, Tourists Will Come

Some people call them roadside attractions; we call them tourist traps.
Either way, it’s an amazing phenomenon: There’s nothing much to see there,
nothing much to do there. Yet tourists go by the millions …

WALL DRUG, Wall, South Dakota

Build It … One summer day in 1936, Dorothy and Ted
Hustead had a brilliant idea: they put signs up along U.S. 16 advertising
their struggling mom-and-pop drugstore. As an afterthought, they included
an offer for free ice water. Wall Drug
was situated 10 miles from the entrance to the South Dakota badlands,
and on sweltering summer days before air conditioning, the suggestion
of free ice water made rickety old Wall Drug seem like an oasis. When
Ted got back from putting up the first sign, half a dozen cars were already
parked in front of his store.

They’ll
Come: The Husteads knew they were on to something. Ted built
an empire of billboards all over the United States, planting signs farther
and farther away from his drugstore. There’s now a sign in Amsterdam’s
train station (only 5,397 miles to Wall Drug); there’s one at the Taj
Mahal (10,728 miles to Wall Drug); and there’s even one in Antarctica
(only 10,645 miles to Wall Drug).

Today, Wall Drug is an enormous 50,000-square-foot tourist mecca with
a 520-seat restaurant and countless specialty and souvenir shops; if it’s
hokey, odds are that Wall Drug sells it. They also have a collection of
robots, including a singing gorilla and a mechanical Cowboy Orchestra.
Wall Drug spends over $300,000 on billboards, but every cent of it pays
off. The store lures in 20,000 visitors a day in the summer and grosses
more than $11 million each year. And they still gave away free ice water
- 5,000 glasses a day.

SOUTH OF THE BORDER, Dillon, South Carolina

Photo: Trenchfoot
[Flickr]

Build It … Driving south on I-95 near the South Carolina
border, one object stands out from the landscape: a 200-foot-tall tower
with a giant sombrero on top. The colossal hat is Sombrero Tower, centerpiece
of the huge South of the Border
tourist complex.

SOB, as the locals call it, began as a beer stand operated by a man named
Alan Schafer. When Schafer noticed that his building supplies were being
delivered to “Schafer Project: South of the [North Carolina] Border,”
a lightbulb lit over his head and he decided his stand needed a Mexican
theme.

They’ll Come: Today, SOB sprawls over 135 acres and
imports – and sells – $1.5 million worth of Mexican merchandise a year.
It has a 300-room motel and five restaurants, including the Sombrero Room
and Pedro’s Casateria (a fast-food joint shaped like an antebellum mansion
with a chicken on the roof). There’s also Pedro’s Rocket City (a fireworks
shop), Golf of Mexico (miniature golf), and Pedro’s Pleasure Dome spa.
Incredibly, eight million people stop into SOB every year for a little
slice of … Mexi-kitsch.

TREES OF MYSTERY, Klamath, California

Photo: geeksplosion
[Flickr]

Build It … When Carl Bruno first toured the towering
redwood forests around the DeMartin ranch in 1931, he was awestruck by
a handful of oddly deformed trees. Dollar signs in his eyes, Bruno snapped
up the property and began luring in travelers to see trees shaped like
pretzels and double helixes. He called his attraction Wonderland Park,
and for the first 15 years of its existence, it did modest business -
but something was missing …

They’ll Come: He decided the park needed a 49-foot-tall
statue of Paul Bunyan. In 1946 Bruno had the massive mythical logger installed
near the highway and changed the park’s name to Trees
of Mystery. Business began to pick up. He added a companion piece,
35-feet-tall Babe the Blue Ox, in 1949. (When Babe was first introduced,
he blew smoke out of his nostrils, which made small children run away
screaming. The smoke was discontinued.)

Trees of Mystery prospered and is still open today. It recently added
an aerial gondola ride, but the park is primarily a bunch of oddly shaped
trees and a tunnel through a giant redwood. The gift shop, which sells
cheesy souvenirs and wood carvings, has been hailed as “a model for
other tourist attractions.” The park was honored by American
Heritage magazine as the best roadside attraction in 2001.

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