Back twenty years to... Thursday, July 7th, 2006. Day 89. Mile-long freight trains, and an abundance of grain elevators. The overstated phenomenon of 'Wall Drug', the never-ending works at the Crazy Horse monument and the awesome majesty of Mount Rushmore.

"Fort Pierre is a tricky one – being simply now an amalgamated suburb of Pierre, the State Capital, it’s pretty-much simply 'ribbon development'. The 'Business District’ consists of – three bars, one of them closed, and an electrician's shop. But still, there's some fairly good photo-opportunities around the place. The town is the birth-place of nine-time world champion rodeo rider, 'Casey Tibbs', and I find his bright effigy amongst some other unrelated 'alternative art' sculptures. So I shoot what I can, get back driving, and cross the Missouri River once again, heading west now on US Highway 14 – or State Highway 34, depending on one’s preference. It’s precisely the very same road, after all.

There are serious side-winds blowing up from the south, and I’m clutching onto the wheel with both hands – as a convoy of oversized eighteen-wheelers loaded with enormous concrete blocks, barrel-on past me. Now US-14 turns directly south, leaving SH-34 all alone, and heading west. And so I have the high winds dead-against me, as the colourful signs for 'Wall Drug' begin to appear. There are apparently over five-hundred billboards advertising the place. They vary in shape and size – and the playful, pithy messages change too:

"Five cents coffee – at Wall Drug." "Have you yet dug – Wall Drug." "New T-Rex – at Wall Drug."

The endless list goes on. At Midland, US-14 turns west again, and now I’m driving through Cottonwood: "Population: 12" the green sign tells me. Now another one I see: "Wall Drug – Only 16 miles to go." Among other esteemed authors, Bill Bryson has written about this unusual and most unlikely phenomenon: "It's an awful place, one of the world's tackiest tourist traps – but I loved it, and I won't have a word said against it."

In Search of Small-Town America: Volume 1 is a free-of-charge Pdf digital download – available from our shop. A table of contents, the introduction, the route-map – and featuring content on the first two States travelled: New Mexico and Arizona.

Jeremy Hammond I am a British writer and photographer, and have travelled through India, China, Southeast Asia and Australia, but most extensively in North America. In the late seventies and early eighties, I worked as lighting crew, and later designer, for many top-named British bands, on tours through Europe, Japan, and the USA. I’ve worked as a cruise-ship photographer, in office and store design, database design, visual arts book publishing and as a London-based freelance photographer, specialising in interiors and architecture.