In the Whitefish Winter Carnival’s earlier years, volunteers were known to hop on a bus and head all over the valley to sell their wares in the form of buttons.  

With penguins and occasionally Yetis on board too, they would sometimes even stop cars on their way to and from Big Mountain, trying to catch skiers in a sale. 

The buttons were the primary fundraiser for the Carnival, and to this day serve as a golden ticket to some of the Carnival’s best events.   

Carnival board member and 2019 Queen of Snows Patricia Ryan started selling buttons in 2016.  

While the downtown bars and stores still play a big role by buying the buttons in bulk to sell to their costumers, “Nobody hardly even carries cash anymore... we’d have to take card!” Ryan said with a laugh. 

Sure enough, in 2026 a button can even be purchased over the phone app Venmo. 

One day a few years ago Ryan was selling buttons to the Stumptown Historical Society, when curiosity prompted her to ask Jill Evans, the executive director, if they had any stashes of older buttons.  

Evans, who was knighted as the “Keeper of Carnival Curios” in years prior, absolutely did. Boxes of them, actually.  

Over the years, many buttons have found their way back to the Historical Society, from royalty and collectors themselves, and from troves of relatives near and far. 

Ryan decided to take a crack at diving into the button stashes, cataloguing and organizing the years. She quickly found out that like trading cards, some years are much rarer than others.  

Sometimes, folks even wonder into the Historical Society as if it’s a button trading post, looking for some particular year for their own collections. 

So Ryan started to ask around.  

“I started to pursue some of the kings and queens, duchesses and primes, saying do you having anything from this year, that year?” she said.  

With the help of many contributors, Ryan has successfully completed at least three full sets, which have been auctioned off at the Carnival Gala each year for thousands of dollars. More sets are in the works.  

The older the button, the rarer it is – although there’s something about 1962 that’s particularly hard to find. Also in high demand is the Mexican hat design of 2012’s “Fiesta Pescado Blanco” and the three different poker chip editions of 2014’s “Viva Las Vegas.” 

A full button collection must also include a misprint from 1976.  

But for Ryan, the hunt and the mystery are all part of the fun.  

“You just never know where they’re going to be,” she said. “Sometimes, I’ll go into a consignment store and find one. Or, sometimes I’ll see special king or yeti pins out in a consignment store – I'll buy those too.”  

THE 2026 WINTER Carnival button has an iridescent shine, glowing behind a snowflake from the cosmos. 

For about 10 years on and off, Hillary Crowley, Carnival board member and 2025 Duchess of Lark, has designed the buttons. It is a unique and fun task, especially since 2011, when the traditional snowflake button design of half a century had a makeover.  

Superman made it onto the 2011 “Carnival Marvels at the Comics” button. Ever since then, the button has resembled the theme – but always with a snowflake incorporated somewhere, in a homage to the traditional design.  

Crowley also designed a poster which includes images of the first 65 years of Carnival buttons, which she says offers a good bird’s-eye view of the evolution of the button. Copies of the poster are for sale at the Historical Society.  

The bird’s-eye view gives just a hint at the story behind each individual button.  

“The fact that our community has had this silliness, this merriment, for going into our 67th year, is pretty incredible,” Crowley said.