"I firmly believe Ithaca is home to the sundae now," says Bruce Stoff of the Ithaca visitors' bureau. "I'm 100 percent sure."

Ithaca says the sundae was first created at the Plat and Colt Pharmacy. They even have a marker to note it, just like Two Rivers.

A feud over bragging rights began earlier this summer, when Stoff started promoting Ithaca as the sundae's true birthplace. Two Rivers then issued a proclamation demanding, mostly tongue-in-cheek, that Ithaca cease and desist with its claim, since Two Rivers was the sundae's true birthplace.

Ithaca responded with an ad in Two Rivers' newspaper, basically saying: "Oh yeah, prove it."

Two Rivers said, "You prove it," and Ithaca said, "OK."

Stoff went back through the old Ithaca Journal newspapers, and in a paper dated April 5, 1892, he found a tiny ad:

Buckley says Berners invented the sundae 10 years before the ad ran. His town isn't giving up - they've even got a fight song.

WHEREAS, several cities including Ithaca, New York all claim the sundae as a bona fide hometown creation, with all the rights, prestige, and festive commercial opportunities contained therein; and

WHEREAS, Ithaca, New York, has irrefutable proof to support its claim; to wit: advertisements in its Newspaper of Record, the Ithaca Daily Journal, beginning May 28, 1892, by its esteemed citizen Chester Platt, owner/proprietor of the Platt and Colt Pharmacy, who promoted for exclusive sale "a new 10 cent Ice Cream specialty" called the " Sunday," AND subsequent articles documenting how Mr. Platt and the Reverend John M. Scott created, named, and enjoyed the first "Sunday:" and

WHEREAS, written language, typography, photography, sound recording, tax recording, court recording, and various other means of archival communication including cave painting were all available to the other competing cities in advance of their alleged claims; and

WHEREAS, competing claimants have had ample opportunity throughout the 19th, 20th, and 21st Centuries to produce any of the above-mentioned forms of evidence, and/or any other proof verifiable by common sense and/or carbon dating; and

WHEREAS, the tangible evidence produced by these other cities to date amounts to bumpkus, and

WHEREAS, without proof they ain't got a leg to stand on; and

WHEREAS, unsubstantiated claims do not constitute historical record, but rather folklore, urban legend, and ripping good yarns; and

WHEREAS, among the various competing cities, Two Rivers, Wisconsin has in the form of a City Council Resolution dated June 19, 2006, asked Ithaca to relinquish its claim of sundae origin and "cease and desist" any promotional activities surrounding invention of the sundae; and

WHEREAS, Two Rivers is charming lakeside city, rich in recreation, natural beauty, history, civic pride, and great story tellers;

WHEREAS, Ithaca is a community enriched by great institutions of higher learning and values education and factual knowledge over superstition and lore; and

WHEREAS, truth demands proof, and without it you got nothin', baby;

Now, therefore, I, CAROLYN K. PETERSON, Mayor of the City of Ithaca, do hereby declare that until such time as another city produces verifiable, historical Proof of Sundae Invention predating our own, Ithaca shall neither cease, desist, nor relinquish its claim as the true, sole, unique Hometown of the Ice Cream Sundae, and furthermore proclaim July as "A Month of Sundaes."

Sundae Wars: Tell Two Rivers We All Surrender

This is an open letter to the good people of nearby Buffalo, as well as those in Evanston and Plainfield, Illinois.

The jig is up.

As you know, we've been part of a grand conspiracy to deny tiny Two Rivers, Wis., its rightful claim to being the home of one of the world's most delightful confections - the ice cream sundae. This deception has spanned three centuries, a guilt we've all inherited with our civic citizenship, and as we sit in this new millennium it's time we all come clean.

Forgive us, Two Rivers, we know not what we do.

Plainfield, once a sleepy agricultural community and now a booming Chicago suburb of 30,000 people, claims a local druggist named Sonntag created the treat in the late 19th century at the request of some patrons. His name, German for Sunday, became attached to the invention and later altered to avoid offending church-going citizens.

Evanston, a thriving city of 75,000 souls named after Northwestern University founder John Evans, insists the sundae came to being when their righteous ancestors objected to the consumption of sinful soda fountain treats on the Lord's Day. As enterprising as they were reverent, local merchants figured out a way to tempt patrons on Sunday without running afoul of the local clergy.

Buffalo claims it was all an accident. This Great Lakes metropolis, the home of chicken wings and the once mighty gateway to the Midwest, tells a tale of Uncle Charley Stoddard. It seems the good man who ran the Queen City's first soda fountain ran out of the bubbly water and had to figure out some other way to make a nickel from his ice-cream-soda-hungry customers. He did, and it's been sweet dreams from there.

Of course, Ithaca's claims dates back to a newspaper advertisement in the April 5, 1892 edition of The Ithaca Daily Journal. Right between ads for a family of three seeking "A flat or small house" and another that wanted a "competent girl," the owners of Platt & Colts Famous Day and Night Soda Fountain offered a new 10-cent specialty - the "Cherry Sunday" - to local consumers. Being the city of evil, we ate it up.

Lies, lies, lies and Ithaca. It's all the same.

But, sister sinners, the city council of Two Rivers has finally acted to set us right. On Monday, that sleepy home to about 12,000 people and, presumably, at least two rivers, approved a government proclamation demanding Ithaca "cease and desist" from telling our tale. To counter our lies, and the lies of all the other pretenders to the sundae thrown, Two Rivers has, well, it's own lie. But it's a lie told by a great journalist, so it's better than the truth.

It seems, H.L. Mencken was spun a yarn supposed to happen in 1881 - 11 years before Ithaca's advertising conceit - about a ice cream parlor owner who succumbed to a customer demanding chocolate sauce on his dish. After that, the special treat was offered only on Sunday, in spite of some little girl's weekday pleading. A competitor in nearby Manitowac picked up the idea, added an extra nickel to the price tag, and started feeding it to that town's hedonistic after-service Sunday crowd. Sure, under this story it's as much Manitowac's spawn as Two Rivers', but never mind that detail. Also, never mind the detail that Mencken later admitted he made the whole thing up for the fun of seeing if we were dumb enough to believe it. That's a trivial detail to the sundae-founding faithful Two Rivers crowd.

So, Plainfield, Evanston, Buffalo, our day in the sundae sun is at its end. It may be hard to surrender lies told for generations, but our desperate pretenses cannot endure when Two Rivers - the home of presumably two rivers and little else - offers a city proclamation, H.L. Mencken and the best lie of all.