Celebrate National Ice Cream Month with Sundaes! (And Find Out Who May Have Created Them)

For ice cream lovers, July is the sweetest month of the year. Not only is that beloved cooling sweet treat the perfect antidote to these sweaty dog days of summer, but July also happens to be National Ice Cream Month. The honorable designation came courtesy of a 1984 Presidential Proclamation in which Ronald Reagan declared ice cream to be "a nutritious and wholesome food, enjoyed by over ninety percent of the people in the United States." In proclamation 5219, the President wrote, "I call upon the people of the United States to observe these events with appropriate ceremonies and activities."
This year's cold, creamy festivities also overlap with another ice cream milestone. Last week, on June 23, Two Rivers, WI, marked its 130th anniversary of "inventing" the ice cream sundae. The small town celebrated with its 31st annual Sundae Thursday, complete with a children's sundae-eating contest and a 25-cent sundae happy hour. Two Rivers' history with the treat dates back to 1881, when, according to the book Sundae Best: A History of Soda Fountains, a man named George Hallauer, visited Ed Berners' soda fountain. Hallauer, who was ordering a cup of ice cream, noticed a container of chocolate sauce, which had until then only been used in ice cream sodas, and asked the proprietor to add a splash to his cup of ice cream. Berners protested, saying the chocolate would ruin the flavor of the ice cream, but Hallauer insisted. "I'll try anything once," he's reported to have said. The chocolate-drenched ice cream was so good that Hallauer ordered a second, and other customers quickly followed suit. The ice cream sundae was born.