Heroics in 1925 Alaska

In late January 1925, Nome, Alaska suffered an outbreak of diphtheria. The medicine needed was about a thousand miles away, in Anchorage. Doctors in Anchorage put the medicine on a train, but deep snows stopped the train well more than 600 miles from Nome. The weather prevented any other form of travel except dog sleds -- well, that, and the fact that the only planes in which volunteer pilots might have risked the flight had been put into winter storage.

Twenty teams were set up in relay. Despite horrific weather and treacherous travel conditions, team after team took its turn on the mission of mercy.

As the legend goes (there seems to be a little dispute about some of the details), when the next-to-last relay team got to the hand-off point, there was no final team in sight, so musher Gunnar Kasson (or Kaasen) -- I've seen various spellings, but mostly these two -- and his lead dog Balto took the exhausted dog team on into Nome. They spent something like twenty hours on the trail.

Balto became the symbol of the perserverance of the dog teams and mushers that battled successfully to get the medicine to Nome in time. He was written up in newspapers around the world.

Today, you can see a statue of Balto in Central Park in New York City. From the write-up at the Central Park website:

Located next to the Willowdell Arch and mounted on top of a small rock outcropping, this harnessed dog with a panting tongue appeals to children who love to climb up and sit on his back while their parents take their photos. Years of stroking and caressing have created a glowing sheen on his ears, nose, body and tail. A bas-relief plaque on the stone below shows the seven sled dogs on their historic run with the inscribed words “Endurance Fidelity Intelligence.”

The Cleveland Museum of Natural History is big on Balto. According their website, Balto and the other dogs on the team had been reduced to a sideshow exhibit after their rise to fame, and the folks of Cleveland rallied to their rescue:

A bargain was struck to buy the dogs and bring them to Cleveland. The deal was to raise $2,000 in two weeks. With the help of the local media, Cleveland's response was explosive.

Cleveland public school children collected coins in buckets; factory workers passed the hat; hotels, stores and visitors donated what they could to the Balto fund. The Western Reserve Kennel Club added a needed financial boost and the money was raised in 10 days.

On March 19, 1927, Balto and six companions (Tillie, Fox, Sye, Billy, Old Moctoc and Alaska Slim) were triumphantly brought to Cleveland and given a heroes' welcome in a parade through Public Square to City Hall. The honored dogs were then taken to Brookside Zoo (now the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo) where they lived out their lives in dignity. Approximately 15,000 people visited them the first day. Balto died March 14, 1933, at the age of 11. The body was mounted at The Cleveland Museum of Natural History, where it has been kept as a reminder of his gallant race against death.

The Wikipedia entry on Nome, Alaska, has more.

Nature, at PBS, also has more on Balto, including the news that some Alaskan schoolchildren have been campaigning to have his body moved from Cleveland to Alaska.

Balto is remembered in books:


Balto and the Great Race


The Bravest Dog Ever: The True Story of Balto: (Step into Reading Books Series)

And movies: Balto (and two sequels).

And, oh yeah, every year at the Iditarod Sled Dog Race.

Hmmm. I see the Iditarod website write-up of The 1925 Serum Run to Nome has more details than the other sites to which I've linked so far -- including names of other mushers and dogs, including a dog named Togo, who...

Well, in the spirit of giving every dog his due, here's part of what the Iditarod site says:

Leonhard Seppala left Nome intending to rest at Nulato and return with the serum. But Seppala met Gonangnan at Shaktoolik where he took the serum and turned around, heading back for Nome. He carried the serum back over Norton Sound with the thermometer 30 degrees below zero. Seppala had to face into a merciless gale and in the darkness retraced his route across the uncertain ice. When Seppala turned the serum over to Charlie Olson in Golovin, after carrying it 91 miles, he and his team, including the famous lead dog, Togo, had traveled a total of 260 miles.

Olson turned the serum over to Gunnar Kaasen, who took it the remaining 53 miles to Nome.

Balto, Kaasen's lead dog, owned by Seppala, was memorialized with a statue in Central Park in New York City. Seppala always felt that his lead dog, Togo, didn't get enough recognition for his 260 mile effort. After Togo died, Seppala had him custom mounted and he is now on display at Iditarod® Headquarters in Wasilla. Balto is on display in Cleveland at the Museum of Natural History.

More on Togo here.

Iditarod XXXIV, by the way, starts March 4.

Did I mention earlier that there seemed to be a dispute over some of the details of the 1925 Serum Run? That may have been an understatement. Authors Gay Salisbury and Laney Salisbury spent four years trying to track down the facts of the case, before writing


The Cruelest Miles: The Heroic Story of Dogs and Men in a Race Against an Epidemic

See Tracking the Ghosts of Alaska (at National Geographic) for the story behind the book.

Addition: Welcome to the folks coming over from Can We Go To Central Park Tomorrow? at Either End of the Curve.

(And if anybody else links, please drop a note in the comments section. That "Links" feature on here has been pretty hit and miss lately.)