Snow Queens 2006

The Dacotah Prairie Museum featured the Snow Queen Festival, a sixty year-old Aberdeen tradition. This year’s 2006 Snow Queen theme is “Enduring the Test of Time”.

Aberdeen’s Junior Chamber of Commerce, or the Jaycees, has hosted the Snow Queen Festival since 1946. The creation of a “Snow Queen Committee” to oversee and organize the contest in recent years has been a Jaycee outgrowth, allowing Queen contestants, Frosty the “Mystery” Snow Man, and the Snow Guards to promote South Dakota in a positive way.

The festival began when Aberdeen was invited to the St. Paul Winter Carnival. Aberdeen decided after that experience that a festival of just South Dakota girls should be held each year. Now, 50 plus communities select a Snow Queen from their area for the competition. Each January, the Snow Queen Festival is held in Aberdeen and a South Dakota Snow Queen is chosen. To promote this South Dakota winter tradition, many features were added to the festival, such as a mystery Frosty the Snowman and the Snow Guards. At one point in history, there was even a Governor’s snowmobile race.

The exhibit included items from both the Museum’s permanent collection and loaned items from past Snow Queen families. These included personal and festival scrapbooks, badges, buttons and Snow Queen memorabilia. The exhibit also featured the 59 framed photos of past Snow Queens, original gowns, crowns, and sashes from past Queens and a hands-on section where people can try on capes and crowns. The exhibit displayed its newly acquired frosty costume and the first ever crystal gift from the St. Paul Winter Carnival and the very first Snow Queen white satin cape.

For information on other past exhibits in the Dacotah Gallery, please click here.