A century ago, the editor of The Dartmouth received a letter filled with ideas that would radically change the history of the College.
The writer, Fred Harris, a member of the Class of 1911 and founder of the Dartmouth Outing Club, answered his own main question "What is there to do at Dartmouth in the winter?" by proposing the creation of "a meet or field day during February" so that students could "enjoy the outdoors in a Hanover winter, relax and have fun after the turmoil of the first semester and exams," he wrote in the letter.
"Such an event would undoubtedly be a feature of college," The Dartmouth said in response to Harris' letter.
"It is not impossible that Dartmouth, in initiating this movement, is setting an example that will later find devotees among other New England and northern colleges."
On Feb. 26, 1910, two months after Harris' letter was published in The Dartmouth, the inaugural Winter Meet was held on the golf course and a tradition was born.
The duration of the meet renamed Winter Carnival in 1911 was extended to four days in 1912, but was canceled in 1917 during World War I due to food and fuel reserve concerns. Winter Carnival was reinstated in 1920, only to be canceled again during World War II.
Following the war, fewer student volunteers participated in the planning of the event, and DOC members had to assume even more responsibility. With the transition to the quarter system in 1959, even fewer students volunteered.
On April 5, 1961, the DOC decided to separate itself from the responsibilities of organizing Winter Carnival, and the College created the Winter Carnival Council to handle the organization of the weekend's activities.
Since its inception, Winter Carnival has undergone numerous transformations and has seen its fair share of glamor, excitement and debauchery.
The first Winter Meet featured hockey games, ski jumping contests and 100-yard dashes on snowshoes and skis.
Despite its beginnings as a Dartmouth intramural event, Winter Meet, renamed Winter Carnival in 1911, soon became an intercollegiate competition attended by student athletes from around the world.
"By 1930, Carnival was a national tradition," John Rand '38, Executive Director of the Dartmouth Outing Club, wrote in the DOC's records.
"And in 1936 with visiting foreign ski teams, the Swiss, the Germans, the Chileans, and the Norwegian Air Force Team, as well as the Canadians, it became a ski meet of international recognition, with two pictures of the Carnival Queen and snow sculpture popping up in the newspapers of France, England, and Japan to name a few."
One Winter Carnival tradition that has since been dropped from the program is Outdoor Evening, an event at Occom Pond that commonly featured fireworks, ice-skating and performances.
Snow sculptures have been constructed on the Green for Winter Carnival since 1925, and the tradition remains one of Winter Carnival's most prominent. The first sculpture was a medieval castle in the theme of the first Carnival, "Jutenheim Iskarneval," an allusion to the Scandinavian carnivals that inspired Dartmouth's Carnival.
In 1987, Dartmouth students broke the Guinness world record for largest snow sculpture ever made by sculpting a snowman that stood at over 47.5 feet tall.
During previous Carnivals, fraternities and residence halls created their own sculptures as part of a campus-wide competition. This year that tradition will return and various campus groups will construct sculptures on the Green from Feb. 8 to Feb. 10.
With the introduction of a Carnival Ball in Webster Hall and artistic productions, such as performances by the Dartmouth Players, Glee Club and other groups, women began to flock to Hanover to take part in the festivities.
The all-male student body looked forward to Winter Carnival, when their dates boarded trains and buses to Hanover for the weekend.
Fraternity brothers vacated their houses to make room for the ladies, who were guarded by chaperones to deter unwanted male visitors.
"Hanover is set back on its collective heels as girls, girls, girls pour in," The Dartmouth wrote in 1936.
Winter Carnival captured the attention of many prominent journalists by the 1920s, according to a 1930 Dartmouth Alumni Magazine. In 1916, National Geographic gave Dartmouth's Winter Carnival the title of "Mardi Gras of the North."
Dartmouth's Winter Carnival was also the inspiration behind Walter Wagner's film "Winter Carnival." By Wagner's request, Budd Schulberg '36 and F. Scott Fitzgerald ventured to Hanover for the 1939 Winter Carnival. The screenwriters made little progress on the script and instead rekindled Fitzgerald's struggles with alcoholism by frequenting Alpha Delta fraternity and Psi Upsilon fraternity during their stay, according to a 2003 article in the New York Times.
"It's not too easy, you know, to cram the whole of this Dartmouth Spirit' into a Carnival story and really grasp it," Schulberg said in an interview with The Dartmouth in 1939.
"It's a whole year's job...and there's plenty of headaches. We've torn up a couple of ideas already...and this morning we threw out the entire script we just completed. The Hollywood way of doing things, you know."
The Dartmouth praised Schulberg's work and said that he "has what it takes to make it."
Conversely, Fitzgerald was heckled by Dartmouth professors, who viewed him as a washed-up alcoholic no longer relevant in the realm of American literature.
"In a chair directly across from Mr. Wagner was Mr. F. Scott Fitzgerald, who looked and talked as if he had long since become tired of being known as the spokesman of that unfortunate generation of the 1920s," John Hess '39 wrote in The Dartmouth in 1939.
After stumbling back to the Hanover Inn after a night of drunken escapades and debauchery, Schulberg and Fitzgerald were promptly fired.
Eighteen months later, Fitzgerald died at the age of 42. His 1939 interview with The Dartmouth was the last he ever granted, according to the book "Winter Carnival: A Century of Dartmouth Posters."
The film "Winter Carnival" has been played every year since its production.
"It's become a tradition at Winter Carnival," Schulberg said at the Hofstra University F. Scott Fitzgerald Conference in 1992.
"They show it at midnight on Saturday night, and the kids just absolutely flip out, I mean, it beats the Marx Brothers for comedy.
They just scream with laughter and fall out of their seats. I've sat there with them and thought, Oh if only they knew. If only they knew...'"
Winter Carnival was once the fascination of many national media outlets.
It was covered on national television by CBS in 1960, included in Playboy Magazine's "Playmate of the Month" spread in 1971 and featured in a Pepsi commercial in 1974.
Though many still visit Hanover for the winter celebration, Carnival weekend attracted much larger crowds in earlier years. In 1952, visitors caused an eight-mile traffic jam leading into Hanover.
