It takes a lot of moxie to celebrate snow, ice and wind-chill factors. It’s good to live in a place that, faced with snow and ice and wind, does.
In the midst of a bone-chilling, sub-zero January, St. Paul needs a challenge to winter. It arrives Thursday with the St. Paul Winter Carnival.
We can thank the marketing savvy of St. Paul civic and business leaders who rose to a challenge in 1886.
The celebration they crafted keeps bringing us together, year after year. The legend and lore that later evolved — about the magical realm of King Boreas and his Queen of the Snows — are among our cherished community traditions.
The founders were driven, as the story goes, to respond to a put-down from a New York journalist that our area was “another Siberia, unfit for human habitation in the winter.”
“Why the Siberian comparison mattered to 19th century Minnesotans relates to immigration and economic development,” writes Moira F. Harris, in the Carnival history, “Fire & Ice.” “The Twin Cities were growing faster than any other communities in the nation. People were coming both to settle and for health reasons, even in winter … Anyone who suggested that the cold would be uncomfortable or make life hazardous affected plans of business leaders who were busily supporting immigration …”
In that first year, “the enthusiastic organizers were a harried group tasked with planning events to fill an ambitious agenda for an entire month, including the first ice palace ever built in the United States and the largest ever built in the world,” St. Paulite Patrick Hill wrote Sunday on these pages. “It is understandable, then, that they had little time to perfect the Winter Carnival legend (for example, Borealis Rex was the name of the first Ice King, and Vulcanus was not yet known.”
It wasn’t until 1937 that “The Rollicking Realm of Boreas” — and the story of his ultimate dethroning by Vulcanus Rex and his Krewe, making way for spring — was penned by St. Paul Dispatch columnist Frank Madden.
Today, “The Coolest Celebration on Earth” calls us together for parades, treasure hunting, rides down the giant slide at the State Fairgrounds and much more (event details are at winter-carnival.com). Offerings are a mix of tradition and innovation as the carnival changes with the times: The Autonomous Snowplow Competition (autosnowplow.com), challenges college students, as well as the general public, to “design, build and operate a fully autonomous snowplow to remove snow from a designated path.” An inaugural outdoor baseball game — “come for the tailgating and stay for the five-inning outdoor game” — takes place at 1 p.m. Feb. 1 at Midway Stadium.
The Carnival founders’ vision was sound. The celebration they created today draws 350,000 visitors a year, according to the carnival’s website.
The good-for-St. Paul benefits are many, as visitors fill restaurants and hotel rooms, and help create what every city wants: vitality.
That means a lively mix of things to do for those who choose to live here, and entertainment options that make St. Paul a destination for others, including those who travel from elsewhere around the region.
The carnival and events like it “build community and pride in the area and promote St. Paul to a greater audience,” said Rosanne Bump, president and CEO of the St. Paul Festival & Heritage Foundation, which manages the carnival.
Saturday will be a big day, with things to do from early morning until late at night. A signature event, the King Boreas Grande Day Parade, at 2 p.m., runs along West Seventh Street from Grand Avenue to Rice Park.
“To us, a beautiful day is about 20 degrees — warm enough to play outside” but not too cold, Bump told us.
The forecast? On the money: Partly cloudy, with highs near 20 — in a town where good events add up to a strong community.
Copyright 2014 Pioneer Press.
