Winter sports, Snow Queens, F. Scott Fitzgerald, snow sculptures, CBS, Dartmouth Duchesses, soft drink companies, thousands of visitors -- all these and more have been part of Dartmouth's annual Winter Carnival during its illustrious 90-year history.
How It All Began
Fred Harris '11 is one alum whose lasting Dartmouth legacy can hardly be questioned.
Winter Carnival was first conceived in 1909 when Harris -- who also founded the Dartmouth Outing Club -- wrote a letter to The Dartmouth proposing a "meet or field day" to take advantage of the New Hampshire winter.
After The Dartmouth printed an editorial supporting Harris' idea, plans began to take shape for Dartmouth's first Winter Carnival, which occurred just two months after Harris first expressed his idea on Feb. 26, 1910.
That year, the events held on the Hanover golf course included only sporting activities such as ski races and a hockey game.
The event was so popular, however, that it was expanded the next year to include social events and more skiing races.
The rest, as they say, is history.
Social Scene
One explanation for the historic popularity of the Winter Carnival was its success in attracting women to the all-male Dartmouth campus.
By the 1950s, hordes of women from colleges around the country were invading the College each year to meet up with their boyfriends or, more frequently, blind dates.
In 1952, 1,800 women came by busloads and trainloads to participate in the Carnival festivities.
So important were the female visitors to the Winter Carnival that each had her name printed in The Dartmouth, which was filled with advertisements for dinner-for-two specials, corsages and other dating necessities.
So many women came to Dartmouth during the Carnival's heyday that male students often found themselves evicted from their rooms in dormitories and fraternities so the females would have a place to stay.
During these years the administration generally found the College's men more than willing to make the sacrifice of their rooms in the name of the having the women up for the weekend.
Visiting women participated in two now vanished Carnival traditions -- the Queen of the Snows and Duchess of Dartmouth competitions.
First held in 1923, the Queen of the Snows contest was a beauty competition that attracted as many as 50 participants each year.
Dartmouth men are said to have lured dates to campus by telling the women that they might be crowned the Carnival Queen.
Descriptions of the event from the Carnival's heyday in the '50s remind a reader of the somewhat less "progressive" atmosphere of the day.
Diana Weeks, the 1952 Carnival Queen, is described in The Dartmouth as "a blond lass" with "a very cute face and a vivacious smile."
The Duchess of Dartmouth competition was somewhat more literary. Sponsored by The Dartmouth, contestants were required to submit an essay summarizing why they wanted to attend Winter Carnival.
Letters were judged on originality, style, and wit. The winner was met by the newpaper directorate at the train station and provided with an escort.
Traditions
While some traditions such as ski races and Carnival dances date back to the first few festivals, others were added one by one over the course of the last 90 years.
One of the hallmarks of both the historic and the modern Carnival is the snow sculpture on the Green. The first sculpture, which appeared in 1925, depicted a medieval castle.
Snow sculptures quickly became a major part of the annual festivities as fraternities and dormitories competed to see who could build the best image out of ice and snow.
Many different images have been the subject of snow sculptures over the years. Dragons, Native Americans and gods have all been formed of snow at one time or another.
A 47-foot high snowman built in 1987 was one of the tallest snowmen ever built and is listed in the Guiness Book of World Records.
1925 was also the first year when Winter Carnival had a theme. That year it was "Jhatem heim dskarnival," a tribute to traditional Scandinavian winter festivals.
Not all of the best known Carnival events are long time traditions, however. One student favorite, the Keg Jump at Psi Upsilon fraternity, only came into its present form during the 1980s.
Many students also do not realize how recently the Polar Bear swim in Occum Pond was integrated into the Big Winter Weekend.
The first swim, organized by Rachel Gilliar '98, took place only six years ago, in 1994, and now attracts over a hundred students crazy enough to jump into freezing water each year.
A Famous Visitor
One of the most celebrated Winter Carnival stories revolves around one of the most famous people brought to Dartmouth by the festivities.
In 1939, F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of "The Great Gatsby," arrived at Dartmouth during Carnival weekend to make a movie based on a book entitled "Winter Carnival" that he wrote with Budd Schulberg '36.
The festivities proved more than a match for Fitzgerald's powers of concentration, however. Fitzgerald was fired from the production after he spent just a bit too much time participating in the events he was supposed to be helping to film.
Fitzgerald spent much of the weekend drinking with students in various fraternity basements, including Alpha Delta and Psi U fraternities. The end to Fitzgerald's involvement with the film came in an embarrassing scene in front of the Hanover Inn.
Legend has it that upon his return to New York, Fitzgerald had to check into a sanitarium to recover from the rigors of a Dartmouth Carnival weekend. Sadly, the author died just a year and a half later.
Rise and Fall
After its inception, Winter Carnival quickly became a major Dartmouth tradition. Today, it remains a fixture of Winter Term, but the event has lost some of the importance it once had.
The popularity of Winter Carnival grew through the years, and reached its heyday during the decade following World War II.
By the 1950s, Winter Carnival was attracting thousands of visitors to Dartmouth from across the country at the beginning of February every year to participate in Carnival activities and to enjoy the ice shows and musical acts.
Visitors to the College in 1952, for example, ran into an eight-mile long traffic jam as they entered Hanover for the Big Weekend.
During the '60s and '70s, however, Winter Carnival's importance and popularity with those outside the Dartmouth community began to wane.
With coeducation, both the Queen of the Snows and the Duchess of Dartmouth competitions became Carnival history.
Other traditions have also fallen by the wayside with the passing years, including the ski jump on Freshman Hill at the golf course.
Nevertheless, media attention to the annual winter festivities has been plentiful over the last 40 years.
CBS sent a television crew to record the events of Winter Carnival in 1960, while Playboy magazine shot its "Playmate of the Month" feature at Dartmouth during the 1971 festivities.
Commercials for products ranging from Studebaker cars to Pepsi-Cola have also been taped with Carnival backdrops.
A Campbell's soup commercial for beef boullion soup is said to have made beef boullion punch a popular drink at fraternities that year.
