Day three started with Joe and me heading east to Wall, South Dakota home of the famous Wall Drug where we were going to meet up with Roger and Connie who had been driving from Indiana. All along the way, you'd see all types of signs advertising the drug store.
Wall Drug Store, often referred to simply as "Wall Drug", is a shopping mall consisting of a drug store, gift shop, restaurants and various other stores. Unlike a traditional shopping mall, all the stores at Wall Drug operate under a single entity instead of being individually run stores. 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 got the idea to advertise free ice water to parched travellers heading to the newly-opened Mount Rushmore monument 60 miles to the west. From that time on business was brisk. Wall Drug grew into a cowboy-themed shopping mall/department store. Wall Drug includes a western art museum, a chapel and an 80-foot Apatosaurus that can be seen right off Interstate 90.
Our last picture ever...
These are rare albino prairie dogs located outside Badlands National Park...
Our last adventure of the day was visiting a Minuteman Missile National Historic Site in the middle of nowhere South Dakota.
In the late 1950s the Air Force chose South Dakota as one of the locations to base the nation's nuclear arsenal with the installation of Minuteman missiles. The Army Corps of Engineers (Army Corps) began surveying sites throughout western South Dakota by the fall of 1960, and subsequently began negotiating with landowners for rights-of-entry to construct Launch Facilities. The Minuteman I Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) construction program at Ellsworth Air Force Base progressed rapidly and construction began during the fall of 1961.
The Air Force's policy on site selection in South Dakota was multifaceted. Sites were primarily selected by balancing a variety of criteria, including maximizing Minuteman operations, minimizing each sites' vulnerability to sabotage, using the taxpayers' money wisely, and adapting individual sites to construction and operational needs, all with an eye to unique qualities of individual locations. Other factors that contributed to the selection of sites were the physical features of the land, including the geology and terrain of the area, the types of soil, and the amount of available ground water.
For cost and efficiency, the Air Force located missile sites near the existing Ellsworth Air Force Base in order to provide logistical support to the facilities. The missiles were located within an area approximately one hundred miles east and north of the base, in an expanse covering approximately 13,500 square miles of western South Dakota. We truly were out in the middle of nowhere.
This is the absolutely the last picture ever taken of Joe some 36 hours before his death.
This is looking down into where the missle is located.
What a trip! I'm glad you're getting this all down.
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