Skip to Content, Navigation, or Footer.
Support independent student journalism. Support independent student journalism. Support independent student journalism.
The Dartmouth
July 12, 2025 | Latest Issue
The Dartmouth

From 1911 to present

What do Playboy bunnies, soft drink commercials, F. Scott Fitzgerald and a fire-breathing dragon have in common?

If you guessed Dartmouth's Winter Carnival, you guessed right.

The annual winter weekend of festivity has an extensive and varied history, ranging from the amusing to the lewd.

The event was the brainchild of Fred Harris '11, the founder of the Dartmouth Outing Club. In 1909 Harris wrote a letter to The Dartmouth proposing a carnival in which students could utilize the "splendid opportunities which our College offers".

In February of that year Harris organized a sports field day. In 1911 the event was expanded to include social events and intercollegiate skiing competition, and Winter Carnival as we know it was born.

The event soon expanded and became a major attraction for the College and well-known throughout the Northeast.

In 1925 students created the first snow sculpture, a medieval castle that was such a hit it inspired sculpture competitions among fraternities and dormitories for the best snow creation. Sculpture became a tradition of Winter Carnival, and creations have ranged from a 1939 statue of Eleazar Wheelock brandishing a beer mug to a 1969 dragon that breathed actual fire (courtesy of a butane tank contained within the snow).

The first time Carnival was given a theme was in 1925, when "Jhaten heim dskarnival" celebrated Scandinavian winter festivals.

In the pre-coeducation days of Dartmouth, the most important part about the weekend was the hordes of women who descended upon Hanover. Winter Carnival soon became the biggest weekend all year for Dartmouth men to attempt romance. Buses and trains full of girlfriends and blind dates from colleges all over the Northeast would converge upon Hanover for a weekend of revelry.

So many women - 1800 for the 1952 Carnival - came during the heyday of Carnival that Dartmouth men often found themselves evicted from their residence halls so females would have someplace to stay. One story recounts Russell Sage residents who were forced to move out for the weekend, cleaning up their rooms, and removing the window shades so they could look into the rooms from across the way in Butterfield.

Fraternity brothers also gave up their rooms in houses so their dates could have someplace to sleep. The influx of women into Hanover was so highly anticipated that The Dartmouth would publish a list of all the women coming to Carnival.

In the 1950s Carnival hit its peak as a tourist event, with extensive ice shows and musical acts brightening the winter weekend.

One now-defunct Carnival tradition which began in 1923 was the crowning of the "Queen of the Snows", in which one lucky female was chosen in a pageant to rule over the dance held at the Dartmouth Outing Club's Occom Pond lodge.

The crowning of the Queen was one of the biggest events of Carnival. In 1958, the judging panel, which included Dartmouth students, professors, and professional photographers, chose Marilyn Whinnerah, a University of Colorado undergrad, out of 43 hopeful contestants to be that year's "Queen of the Snows".

The Dartmouth's description of the event hearkened back to less progressive days at the College, describing the winner with the phrase "Dressed in blue ski pants and a Swedish ski sweater, Marilyn approached and addressed the judges with the poise of a professional model."

Dartmouth men would try to lure women to come up for the weekend by telling them they had a chance to be Carnival Queen, but woe to the man whose date was actually chosen - he wouldn't see her for the rest of the weekend.

The popularity of the pageant waned with the coming of coeducation, and in the mid-1970's the crowning of the Queen of the Snows was eliminated.

A major legend of Winter Carnival is the story of F. Scott Fitzgerald's experience at Dartmouth. He spent the 1939 Carnival weekend in the basements of Psi Upsilon and Alpha Delta rather than working on the movie "Winter Carnival," which he was supposed to be writing. Eventually the author of "The Great Gatsby"was fired from the movie by Buzz Schulberg '36 in an embarrassing scene in front of the Hanover Inn.

Fitzgerald checked into a New York sanitarium to recover from the weekend, and died a year and a half later.

In the 60s and 70s, Carnival experienced a decline from the peak of its popularity, but it still remained a very significant event for the College.

Some interesting anecdotes still remain from the Carnivals of two decades ago, though: in 1971 Playboy did its "Playmate of the Month" feature during Carnival and paid Bones Gate brothers (with a half-keg) to sculpt a snow representation of the Playmate on their lawn. In 1974 Dartmouth students were featured in a Pepsi commercial that was taped in front of Wheeler and used Winter Carnival as its theme.

As Carnival works toward its centennial anniversary, new traditions, like keg jumping, are created and old ones, like the Snow Queen pageant, are lost to posterity.