Visitors can also create packaging for their ice cream, take an Personali-Tea test, milk a mechanical cow, walk through a giant tub of ice cream, sit in a milk truck, record their own Turkey Hill advertisement and chill out in a simulated ice cream freezer. The museum’s walls are covered in nostalgic memorabilia and history about the dairy.

The museum also houses a first floor creamery where visitors can order sandwiches, soups, salads and some ice cream flavors such as chocolate or lemon gelato and whoopie pie ice cream not found anywhere else.

An in-house retail store sells Turkey Hill T-shirts, hats, baby bibs, games, sundae cups and sunglasses. Turkey Hill expects to entertain more than a quarter million visitors annually.

“We think a lot of people don’t know our story who would enjoy hearing it,” said Quintin Frey, Turkey Hill president. “We think as we tell our story, people will become even more in love with our products.”

His grandfather delivered the first Turkey Hill product, quarts of milk, to customers in Columbia in the 1930s. So it’s only fitting the museum took over a Columbia landmark, the former Ashley & Bailey silk mill that sat vacant for more than 25 years.

“We thought this was authentic to our story. The people of Columbia have been our longest customers,” he said.

The idea for the museum started about 25 years ago when a supplier, who is an ice cream historian, suggested the dairy open a museum dedicated to ice cream. Over the years Turkey Hill looked at various locations.