Dartmouth Winter Carnival

Dartmouth Winter Carnival

Weekend in February

The students of Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, have been celebrating Winter Carnival since 1910, when they decided to hold their own mini- Olympics to shake off the winter blues. Soon other colleges were invited to join in the athletic events, which included ski jumping and snowshoe races. By the 1920s, there were so many parties and balls associated with the weekend that it was called "The Mardi Gras of the North."
The event became even more popular after it was featured in the 1939 movie Winter Carnival . Students from other colleges, some as far away as Florida, came to Hanover to join in the fun, and eventually drunkenness and vandalism became a problem.
Carnival events nowadays are limited to Dartmouth students and their guests. Teams from a dozen or so northeastern colleges and universities compete in Nordic and Alpine skiing, ski jumping, hockey, basketball, gymnastics, and other sports. But the highlight for many is the snow sculpture competition on the Dartmouth green. Because snow has been so scarce in some recent winters, the sculptors sometimes have had to rely on snow trucked in from nearby ski areas, scraped off parking lots, and recycled from skating rinks.

CONTACTS:
Dartmouth College, Student Activities Office
303 Collis Ctr.
Hanover, NH 03755
603-646-3399; fax: 603-646-1386
www.dartmouth.edu