Theodore E. Hustead

(1902-1999) born at Phillips, Hamilton County, lived at Aurora and Lincoln. Pharmacist, businessman, known as founder in 1931 of world-famous Wall Drugstore at the small town of Wall, South Dakota, he established a tourist attraction by offering free ice water, 5-cent cups of coffee, buffaloburgers and more, including a museum collection of Western, Indian, rodeo and pioneer artifacts, a mechanical cowboy orchestra, clothing store and cafeteria; his advertising signs were posted from Antarctica to Europe to the Middle East that gave mileage to Wall Drugstore, which by the turn of the 21st century occupied one town block with four entrances and annual sales of $10 million, featured in over 700 magazine and newspaper articles. Consult Minneapolis /MN/ Sunday Tribune, July 31, 1949, p. 12 and Newsweek, January 29, 1962, p. 74 and Omaha Sunday World Herald Magazine of the Midlands, December 6, 1987, pp. 14-15 and South Dakota Magazine, March/April 1988, pp. 25-27 and obituary in New York Times, January 17, 1999, Sec 1, p. 43.

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