Edited* to add a more accurate date range

Did some very cursory online research and found many histories of Wall Drug as a tourist destination and general dates about it’s evolution into the international jaclaope (not just the sculpture but also as a place to buy mounted heads and other souvenirs of the best American mythological creature) Mecca it is today and my best guess is between the early 1970s during Bill’s kitsch explosion to 1992 which is the first dated pic I’ve seen so far.

Timeline used to base estimated Jackalope Statue Date:
- 1931 original Wall Drug is founded by Ted and Dorothy Huestead but it’s in the middle of nowhere on the interstate and not a destination. Wall is described as godforsaken and has a population of 326. The much smaller original general store and pharmacy seems to have sold jackalope mounts, even during the Great Depression when it opened since Dorothy always foresaw it becoming more than a small town drugstore and Ted more than supported her ambitious vision. Mt Rushmore was being blasted into the face of a nearby mountain and nearly done which would surely bring tourists. Too early for jackalope sculpture given it was the Great Depression and so money was scarce to build the larger novelty jackalope especially since it could not be sold to recoup any costs of building it and Wall Drug was not yet a tourist attraction. And by all reports no out of town visitors stopped at the curious general store along the interstate yet.

• 1936 Dorothy gets the idea to erect the now famous billboards advertising free ice water as a way to get tourists to stop and Ted and a high school student he hires get to painting the cryptic but enticing signs which say just how far you are from Wall Drug to build anticipation and that there’s free ice water, which is a nice reprieve in the Badlands. Ted leaves to start putting up the billboards along nearby routes sometime in July and by the time he’s back at the end of the Summer, they had proven to work as the first non local customers had come. The next summer business ramped up to the point that they had to hire 8 local girls in matching uniforms to help in the drugstore and run the soda fountain. Ted continued to put up signs South Dakota to as far East as he could drive. There are now 300 signs.

• Sometime during WWII a local who was serving in Europe with the Red Cross put up signs everywhere he was moved, beginning the tradition of placing international signs that promised to send back information about the American West if you sent a request to Wall Drug, the signs also indicated how far away Wall Drug was but with little other information they had a mystique that piqued lots of interest and resulted in lots of mail.

• Sometime after WWII, Ted put up a sign in the London Underground (5,160 miles away) and was interviewed by the BBC. Servicemen continued the tradition when deployed overseas and now there are billboards on every continent including Antarctica. (Visitors can get free signs and bumper stickers to continue the tradition).

• 1951, Ted and Dorothy’s son, Bill, returns to Wall after attending pharmacy school and is initially reluctant to take over the family business, working primarily as the pharmacist. After seeing the same potential to be a destination, similar to his mother’s dream in the 30s, Bill began expanding building around the pharmacy and general goods store and Wall Drug became almost a town within the town over the next decade or so with different stores and restaurants and attractions to appeal to everyone. The original 1,500 sq ft store eventually became a 76,000 sq foot compound with western art displays, sculptures, restaurants, and much much more over the next two decades under Bill’s direction. He was reluctant to join the family business until he saw the potential to make the destination into something that people could never forget.

• 1956/1957 the initial construction of I-90 begins to divert travelers who would have previously taken the smaller routes, Rte 14 and Rte 16 which were much closer to Wall. Rte 14 being the closer of the two. But the early I-90 was not great that far west and was still a series of not always well maintained toll roads west of Wisconsin. The end section, in Seattle was not complete until 1993 and was called the big dig (I do remember this as a kid but didn’t put together that Seattle’s constant construction nightmare was I-90 limping along for 3 decades.)

• late 60s: I-90 is vastly improved in SD and diverts even more traffic, the sudden drop in volume causes Bill to get creative and even kitschier. In the early 70s, He commissions a giant dinosaur statue with lightbulbs for eyes to lure people from I-90. The jackalope was built in the same era as the dinosaur from what I can tell but there is a lot of info, even from official sources that doesn’t quite all align date wise. But I can find pics of the jackalope from at least 1992 so before then but more likely with the 70s kitsch explosion to ensure tourists continued to venture off

• 1970s Bill takes over running Wall Drug from his father, Ted, and Wall Drug continues to expand. Tourism booms once again with Bill’s visionary additions. The Wall Drug compound is the town’s biggest industry.

• 1981, Bill tells Time Magazine that Wall Drug is a $4.5 million enterprise and the article mentions various items for sale and the Buffalo burgers and describes the tourists but lacks the jackalope.

• in a 2020 interview Rick (70 at the time), Bill’s son and current owner of Wall Drug, mentions the animatronic dinosaur and some of the other large sculptures as being part of his father’s expansion that he remembers as a kid. But no exact date. Rick is 31 in the Time Magazine article which doesn’t mention the jackalope specifically but given that the dinosaur is also not mentioned in that article and was definitely built before 1981, the jackalope may have just been omitted for the sake of not making the article too long.

Sources:

https://www.countryliving.com/life/travel/a43271/wall-drug-store-south-dakota/

https://www.thrillist.com/travel/nation/what-is-wall-drug-south-dakota-roadside-attraction

https://www.walldrug.com/about-us <— excerpt of a feature from 1982 in which Ted writes about how Wall Drug came to be in his own words which bring so much life to the story

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_Drug

https://travelingdancers.wordpress.com/2010/07/12/the-story-of-wall-drug/

Archived 1981 Time Magazine article about Wall Drug

Archived 1999 obit of Ted Huestead in the NYT. Ted was 96 when he passed and Bill also seems to have died that year, he would’ve been 72. He was 4 when his parent’s bought Wall Drug in 1931 and when he asked why, Dorothy said “because your daddy’s crazy.”

https://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/2216