ONAWA, Iowa — It’s highly likely that you’ve munched on an Eskimo Pie. We take the creamy milk chocolate ‘n vanilla treat for granted as a freezer staple today, but it was actually patented on January 24, 1922 as America’s first chocolate-covered ice cream bar.
Christian Kent Nelson (who was also a high school teacher) invented the Eskimo Pie in Onawa, Iowa in 1919 or 1920. He originally called it the I-Scream-Bar.
Supposedly it was inspired by a boy’s indecision in Nelson’s confectionery store in 1920. A boy started to buy ice cream, then changed his mind and bought a chocolate bar. Nelson inquired as to why he did not buy both. The boy replied, ‘Sure I know — I want ‘em both, but I only got a nickel.”
This inspired the salesman to combine the two, Nelson worked for weeks to find the right way to stick melting chocolate to ice cream and create the Eskimo Pie. It was an immediate success locally, and in July 1921 he partnered with Russell C. Stover (the candy maker) to market and produce the renamed ‘Eskimo Pie.’
They sold manufacturing rights to various other companies in exchange for royalty payments. By early 1922, they were selling at the rate of a million bars a day, and caused the price of cocoa beans to rise by 50%!
Due to trademark lawsuits along with high manufacturing and sales costs, the company was sold in 1924 to the company that made the foil wrappers for the Eskimo Pie, the U.S. Foil Corporation. The company was later known the Reynolds Metals Company. Nelson stayed with the company, which was now a subsidiary of U.S. Foil, until his retirement in 1961.
Photos: Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution. Video: Library of Congress
