Mount Rushmore, Wall Drug, The Badlands and More: What to Do in South Dakota

By Lisa Kroulik © November 30, 2011

This past July, my family and I spent nine hours in the car traveling from our home near Minneapolis to Rapid City, South Dakota. As we drove mile after mile seeing nothing but farmland, I was beginning to think that South Dakota was something we just had to endure until we reached our final destination of West Yellowstone, Montana. The powers that be in South Dakota must realize that many people feel this way, which is why they probably started advertising for Wall Drug a good 200 miles before we ever reached it. Every few miles or so, we were reminded yet again that there really is something in South Dakota worth stopping for. I mean no offense to the residents of our neighboring state, but the view from the freeway was nap inducing.

Fortunately, once we reached Rapid City, we learned that there are indeed many things to do in South Dakota. I will highlight the four main attractions that I am aware of and hope this will be helpful to you if you are planning a trip to South Dakota in the near future.

If you weren’t expecting it, you might be surprised by the sight of the likenesses of four dead presidents protruding from a mountain in Rapid City, South Dakota. I am referring, of course, to the iconic Mount Rushmore, which display the faces and busts of Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt. Commissioned in 1927 and designed by German artist Gutzon Borglund, it took 400 people until the year 1941 to finish the monument.

Visitors to Mount Rushmore can walk through the nearby Visitor Center to learn all about the history of the monument, including why each of the four presidents was selected to be memorialized in stone. You will have the opportunity to see original pictures of several stages of development before the monument opened to the public in 1941. There are also plenty of photo ops in front of the mountain itself. Mount Rushmore attracts more than three million visitors every year.

Can you say kitsch? Wall Drug has plenty of it. This widely advertised tourist attraction occupies more than 76,000 square feet and is located on Main Street. It is named Wall Drug after Wall, South Dakota, where it is located. If you’re looking for moose poop candy, a coffee mug with your named emblazoned on it, the requisite tourist t-shirt or any number of practical jokes, you can find it at Wall Drug. If the shopping wears you out, you can grab a meal at Wall Drug Diner that is right in the drugstore.

Wall Drug was not always the tourist trap that it is today. When it was opened in 1931 by Ted and Dorothy Hulstead, they had to offer shoppers free glasses of water to get them through the doors. The town of Wall had a population of just over 300 people, and none of them had any money during the midst of the Great Depression. It has certainly come a long way since then.

Badlands National Park in Interior, South Dakota, attracts people from all over the world due to its unique natural formations. One of the things that draws their attention is the gold rings that are around the top of many of the mountains, spires and other rock formations. The rings form due to geologic deposits from erosion and being surrounded by rich soil. The Badlands stretch out over nearly 250,000 square feet of land. Although wild animals roamed there in earlier times, the most exciting thing we saw was a prairie dog.

I knew that I had done insufficient research about attractions in South Dakota when several people asked me if we had visited the Crazy Horse Memorial and I just looked at them with a blank expression. If we ever happen that way again, it is definitely on my list. The Crazy Horse Memorial, which is located only eight miles from Mount Rushmore in Rapid City, was created in 1948 by a sculptor named Korczak Ziolkowski. He was aided in his efforts by Lakota Chief Henry Standing Bear. Chief Standing Bear decided that a monument honoring Lakota tribe leader Crazy Horse could be instrumental in bringing about a greater understanding between people of Native American heritage and all other races.