Jan 5, 2007 8:33 AM, from staff and wire reports

Rendering of the 100th-anniversary traveling exhibit.

Blue Bell Creameries, the third best-selling ice cream in the United States, is celebrating its 100th birthday in 2007.

The festivities will last all year long and will include a traveling exhibit, a flavor-naming contest, special anniversary ice cream flavors, and a birthday party in July at the firm's Brenham TX headquarters.

Blue Bell will kick off 2007 with a “rolling birthday party,” an 18-wheeler full of company information and memorabilia. The traveling caravan will include a mobile “country store” stocked with anniversary merchandise, and an inflatable Homemade Vanilla carton bounce house for kids to enjoy. The multi-vehicle ice cream odyssey will make stops in 66 cities across the firm's 16-state market area.

Blue Bell Creameries began in Brenham in 1907 as a butter creamery where local farmers could bring excess milk and cream to town to be made into butter. In 1911, it started producing ice cream at the rate of two gallons a day, made in a hand-cranked wooden freezer. In 1930, the company name was changed from The Brenham Creamery to Blue Bell, in honor of a local wildflower.