Flashback Friday: The Queens of Winters Past

The 1947 queen is crowned.
The Winter Carnival Queen for 1947, Queen Barbara Green, is crowned. Pure joy!

The past few weeks the Michigan Tech campus has been gearing up for Winter Carnival 2020! The month-long statue contest began in earnest a few weeks ago, with some of the contests like snow volleyball, curling, snow soccer, and ice bowling taking place this past week.

A portrait of the 1959 carnival queen.
Carnival Queen 1959, Lee Schirmer.

One of the Winter Carnival highlights, the Queens Coronation, takes place on Saturday, February 1 at 7 p.m. in the Rozsa Center. Although not the longest running Winter Carnival tradition — the one night Ice Carnival started in 1922 and the queens did not appear until 1928 — the coronation is one of the most beloved. Bringing together campus and the community, the queens competition has been a fun spectacle almost since the beginning. To celebrate this special event, our Flashback Friday today is a pictorial, looking back at queens and courts of carnivals past!

The 1955 Carnival Queen candidates pose outside with a young man in a sled.
Winter Carnival Queen Candidates from 1955, left to right: Nancy Boyd, Kathy Laine, Dorothy Roy, Carm Guilbault (queen), Mary Aldrich. The women pose with one of the contestants from the Beard Competition.
The 1959 carnival court poses outside in the snow.
The 1959 Court.
The 1968 candidates pose outside in the snow.
The queen candidates pose by a statue in progress, 1968.
A portrait of the 1968 carnival queen.
Julie Anderson, Winter Carnival Queen 1968.
The 1970 carnival queen judges the beard contest.
Wendy Mickle, Winter Carnival Queen 1970, helps to judge the annual Beard Competition.
The 1971 queen candidates pose with a horse and sleigh.
Winter Carnival Queen Candidates of 1971.
Danni Croom, first African-American Winter Carnival Queen
Danni Croom’s reign begins, Winter Carnival Queen 1971.
The 1983 queen candidates pose outside.
Winter Carnival Queen Candidates, 1983.
The 1984 queen and runners up.
Winter Carnival Queen and runners-up, 1984.
Winter Carnival 2009 Queen: Melissa Meyer
Winter Carnival Queen 2009, Melissa Meyer .

This is just a quick glimpse into some of the wonderful photographs we have from queens and carnivals gone by. For more great images of past carnivals, you can check out the digitized Winter Carnival Pictorials on the Archives Section of Digital Commons @ Michigan Tech or stop into the archives anytime during our public reading room hours.