WASHINGTON — Girl Scout cookies are turning 100 years old, and are marking the occasion with the National Girl Scout Cookie Weekend in February.
The cookie weekend will take place from Feb. 24-26.
The first known sale of cookies by Girl Scouts was in 1917, when the Mistletoe Troop in Muskogee, Oklahoma, baked cookies and sold them in their high school cafeteria.
The first organized nationwide cookie sale came in 1933, and by 1936, commercial bankers were called in to assist in making all the cookies.
Baking cookies was suspended during the rationing of World War II, with Girl Scouts selling calendars instead.
Today, the organization says nearly 1 million Girl Scouts participate in the cookie program, generating $800 million in cookie sales during an average year. Also, it estimates more than 50 million households buy the cookies every year.
One of the most popular of them, the Thin Mint, debuted in 1939 as “Cooky-Mints.”
The first Girl Scout troop was organized in 1912 in Savannah, Georgia. There are 2.9 million girls and adults in the organization now.
