A defining Dartmouth tradition, Winter Carnival has had many faces in its 93-year history. Starting as a humble field day, Carnival has evolved into one of the biggest events on campus and over the decades has included athletic competitions, evening balls, beauty pageants and even TV commercials in the years since its founding in 1910.
The first Winter Carnival, the brainchild of Dartmouth Outing Club founder Fred Harris '11, was envisioned as a way for Dartmouth students to take advantage of the school's prime location for winter sports. In a 1909 editorial that ran in The Dartmouth, Harris called for a "meet and field day" to showcase outdoor activities, and the annual tradition was born.
Shortly thereafter on Feb. 26, 1910, the first Winter Carnival, though it was not known by that name until several years later, was held near Occom Pond.
The activities included ski and snow-shoe races, a hockey game and basketball.
Unfortunately, Harris could not attend the winter celebrations due to a knee sprain he received escaping South Fayerweather dormitory, which burned to the ground shortly before the event.
Social activities began to play a role in the festivities by the following year, and Carnival began to take its present form.
In 1925, Carnival was given its first theme and snow sculpture, two components that have come to symbolize the midwinter holiday. The theme was "Jutenheim Iskarneval," in celebration of the Scandinavian carnivals it was modeled after, and the snow sculpture featured a medieval castle.
Snow sculptures quickly became popular, and in 1927 fraternity houses began constructing them on their lawns, each vying for the best creation.
The sculpture on the Green, though, remained the largest attraction, and has featured everything from a dragon that actually breathed fire to a 47-foot snowman that set the record as the largest snowman built to its day.
Women at Carnival
By the 1950s, Carnival had become a huge tourist attraction, due in part to the large numbers of women who came to the then all-male campus to take part in the revelry.
The crowning of the Queen of the Snows was a hallmark of the festivities in those days, and ice shows and musicals entertained guests who came from all over the region.
The pageant began in 1932 to celebrate the special female visitors, and remained a highlight of Carnival until 1975. In 1970, the show became a true spectacle, when a skydiver parachuted onto the Green from 3,500 feet to crown the Queen.
Women from the Seven Sisters colleges usually captured the crown, but in 1936 the honor went to the President of the College''s daughter, Anne Hopkins.
Buses, trains and boyfriends with cars brought women by the thousands from colleges across the Northeast before coeducation. In 1952, the number of cars coming to Hanover resulted in an eight-mile traffic jam to get into town.
The girls came in droves, many bringing their friends along for the College men who didn't know any girls to ask. Special parlor cars were added to the trains in Springfield to deliver the women from Smith and Mount Holyoke to Dartmouth in style. A special Winter Carnival train ran from Boston as well.
"They came by from Wellesley, Mount Holyoke, Skidmore, Smith, Colby Junior College and lots of other places," Lance Tapley '66 recalled.
"It was very distracting indeed from our studies to see all these beautiful, intelligent women on campus. Every one was intelligent and beautiful, as I recall," Tapley said.
The ladies also enjoyed visiting the Hanover Plain.
"When I was at the University of Vermont, it was very, very cool to be invited by a Dartmouth guy to Winter Carnival," Virginia Guarino said about her attendance at the 1968, 1969 and 1970 Carnivals that she attended with a member of Kappa Kappa Kappa fraternity.
While most Dartmouth men brought one girl to Winter Carnival, in 1952, Bob Daly '54 brought seven.
All were winners in the "Why I want to come to Winter Carnival with Bob Daly" essay contest. His friends sent entry forms to Smith College, Wellesley College, Skidmore College and Vassar College, Daly said.
He could not decide on the single best entry, so he chose to escort the seven best instead.
Girls invited by Dartmouth students all received six-foot green and white scarves, Guarino said. "It was the proudest possession of my entire world," laughed a Mount Holyoke graduate who attended Winter Carnival in the early 1960s.
With the admission of women to the College in the 1970s, the dynamics of Carnival changed, albeit slowly. In the mid-1970s women still arrived by bus in time for the festivities, displacing Dartmouth women in the social events, Lucy Karl '77 said.
Even so, the Queens of the Snow contest practically disappeared by 1975, when only five women participated, and the number of women coming from outside schools steadily decreased throughout the decade.
In the national spotlight
Carnival has drawn its share of national attention over the years. A 1939 film titled "Winter Carnival" was co-written by Budd Schulberg '36 and F. Scott Fitzgerald.
While visiting Carnival, Fitzgerald spent so much time downing liquor with brothers at Alpha Delta and Psi Upsilon fraternities that Schulberg fired him from the project in an embarrassing scene outside the Hanover Inn.
Playboy magazine shot a "Playmate of the Month" feature at Dartmouth during the 1971 festival, paying the brothers of Bones Gate fraternity with a half-full keg to sculpt a statue of the Playmate on their lawn.
Commercials, including spots for Pepsi and Campbell's Soup, have also been filmed at Carnivals, and in 1960 CBS taped the celebration.
Changes in tradition
Many traditions from earlier Carnivals, such as the snow sculpture, continue today, but some have fallen by the wayside.
Since coeducation came to Dartmouth, beauty pageants no longer have a place in the festivities. Ski-jumping and ski-joring, in which a horde of participants were pulled on skis behind five horses, are also no longer part of the activities. More recently, Psi U's keg jump was cancelled for safety considerations.
But new traditions have been added to Carnival, too. The Polar Bear Swim was started by Rachael Gilliar '98 in 1994. In that chilly event, students line up to take a chilly plunge into Occom Pond -- though it has been called off at times when the ice on the pond has been too thin.
World events have also played a part in shaping Winter Carnival during previous years.
Carnival has been cancelled twice: in 1933 to protest Prohibition, though students gave in and held Carnival two weeks before the ban on alcohol was finally repealed, and in 1943 because of World War II.
In 1979, students painted the snow sculpture red, green and black to protest the lack of minority recruitment efforts practiced by the College, and in 1991 students threw paint on the sculpture and painted a large peace sign in front of Dartmouth Hall to protest the Gulf War.
Recently it has been said that the size of Carnival has declined, due to the many other activities available to students and the shift in the event's focus from involving the whole town to something that primarily attracts Dartmouth students.
Hanover now hosts its own ice celebration located byOccom Pond, with an ice castle for children to explore.
Whether it has changed or not, however, Carnival is still a beloved Dartmouth tradition.
