The Race to Nome

The wind came howling off the frozen sea. Snow blew sideways, so thick that the musher could barely see the dogs at the front of his own team.

He could not see the trail at all. He had to trust his lead dog to find it.

Somewhere ahead, in the dark, was the town of Nome, Alaska. Strapped to the sled behind him was a small package wrapped in fur and canvas. Inside it was medicine. And in Nome, children were waiting for it.

Trouble in Nome

In January 1925, Nome was a small town on the far western coast of Alaska, near the edge of the Bering Sea. In summer, ships could reach it. In winter, the sea froze, and the town was cut off from the rest of the world. The only way in or out was by dog sled.

That winter, the town's doctor, Curtis Welch, began to see children with sore throats and a terrible illness. He realised it was diphtheria, a disease that can block the throat and make it impossible to breathe. It spreads easily, and it was especially dangerous to children.

There was a medicine, called antitoxin, that could stop it. But Dr Welch's small supply was old, and nowhere near enough. Some children had already died. Unless more medicine came quickly, many more could die.

No way in

A supply of antitoxin was found in a hospital in Anchorage, far to the south. But how could it reach Nome?

The few airplanes in Alaska at that time were small and open, and it was the depth of winter. Flying in such cold and darkness was thought too dangerous. Ships could not get through the ice.

So the medicine was packed up and sent north by train, as far as the railway went, to a town called Nenana. From there, it was still about 1,085 kilometres, or 674 miles, to Nome, across frozen rivers, forests, mountains and sea ice.

The answer was the mail route. Dog-sled teams carried the post along it in winter. Now, the best mushers in Alaska were asked to carry the medicine instead, in a relay, handing it on from one team to the next.

The relay

On the night of 27 January 1925, the first musher, "Wild Bill" Shannon, set off from Nenana with the package tied to his sled. The temperature was far below zero. He ran through the night, then handed it on.

From then on, it passed from team to team. About twenty mushers and around 150 dogs took part. They ran by day and by night. Some of them were Alaska Native mail carriers who knew the trail better than anyone. At each handover, the medicine was carried indoors to warm it a little, so it would not freeze, before going back out into the cold.

The most dangerous stretch was run by a Norwegian musher named Leonhard Seppala and his small but fearless lead dog, Togo. Seppala had already set out from Nome to meet the relay, so his team covered a far greater distance than any other. To save time, he took a shortcut straight across the frozen ice of Norton Sound, where the ice could crack and drift out to sea. Togo led the team through the darkness and the storm, and they got across.

Into the storm

For the last stretches, the weather became even worse. A blizzard swept along the coast.

Late on 1 February, a musher named Gunnar Kaasen took the package and set off with his team. At the front was a black husky called Balto. The wind was so strong that it once tipped his sled over, and Kaasen had to search in the snow with bare hands to find the package. In the whiteout, he could not see the trail, and Balto led the team along it.

Kaasen was supposed to hand the medicine to one more musher. But the next team was not ready, so he kept going himself.

At about half past five on the morning of 2 February 1925, Kaasen's team ran down the empty main street of Nome. The medicine had arrived. The whole relay had taken about five and a half days, a journey that normally took the mail teams many weeks.

Heroes

Dr Welch began treating the sick children at once. The epidemic was brought under control, and many lives were saved.

The story was in newspapers across the world. Balto became the most famous dog in America, and before the year was out a bronze statue of him was put up in Central Park in New York, where children still climb on it today.

Many people in Alaska felt Togo deserved more of the credit, for running the longest and most dangerous part of the route. Today, both dogs are honoured. And every one of those twenty mushers and their teams played a part, each carrying the medicine through their own stretch of cold and darkness.

The Iditarod, a famous sled-dog race across Alaska, follows part of the old trail, and it honours the memory of the serum run.

Want to read more?

The Cruelest Miles by Gay and Laney Salisbury is a gripping and detailed history of the serum run. Kenneth Ungermann's The Race to Nome, written in the 1960s, was one of the first books to tell the whole story.