The Race

The Iditarod Trail soon became the major "thoroughfare" through Alaska.  Mail and supplies were carried in.  Gold was carried out.  All via dog sled.  People used the trail to get from place to place.  Priests, ministers, and judges traveled between villages via dog teams.

During these days, dog drivers relied on a series of roadhouses between their village destinations.  Since these mushers ventured out in most all kinds of weather, word was relayed ahead that a musher and team were on the trail and a kerosene lamp was lit and hung outside the roadhouse.   It not only helped the dog driver find his destination at night, but more importantly, it signified that a team or teams were somewhere out on the trail.  The lamp was not extinguished until the musher safely reached his destination.

All too soon the gold mining began to slack off.  People began to go back to where they had come from and suddenly there was less travel on the Iditarod Trail.  The use of the airplane in the late 1920's signaled the beginning of the end for the dog team as a standard mode of transportation.   The final blow to the use of the dog team came with the appearance of snowmobiles.

By the mid 1960's, most people in Alaska didn't even know there was an Iditarod Trail or that dog teams had played a very important part in Alaska's early settlement.

The story began when Dr. Curtis Welch diagnosed the diphtheria outbreak.  Diphtheria is a serious contagious bacterial disease marked by high fever, weakness, and the formation of false membranes in the throat and other air passages that cause difficulty in breathing.  In children particularly, it can be fatal.

Dr. Welch sent telegrams to Fairbanks, Anchorage, Seward, and Juneau asking for help.  The only serum available was in Anchorage at the Alaska Railroad Hospital, where Dr J.B. Beeson had 300,000 units.   But Anchorage to Nome is more than 1,000 miles, and no planes were available to make the flight.  Time was of the essence.

Governor Scott C. Bone decided the speediest and most reliable way to get the serum to Nome was via dog sled.  He called on the Northern Commercial Company, the largest organization in the Yukon River area, to arrange for relay teams.

The serum was packed up in Anchorage in a cylinder.  Dr. Beeson wrapped it in a quilt for insulation, then it was tied up in canvas for protection.  The first part of the journey was by train from Anchorage to Nenana, near Fairbanks.  The train arrived in Nenana on Tuesday, January 27, 1925, at 11:00 p.m.  Conductor Frank Knight gave the bundle to the first of twenty mushers, William "Wild Bill" Shannon, who took it on the first leg of the 674 miles to Nome.

When Leonhard Seppala's turn approached, he left Nome, intending to rest at Nulato and return with the serum.  But before he reached Nulato, he met Myles Gonangnan at Shaktoolik.  Seppala took the serum from Gonangnan, and without stopping to rest, turned around and headed back to Nome.

He crossed the frozen Norton Sound with temperatures hovering at 30 degrees below zero.  The weather was brutal, with a merciless gale blowing and the trail hard to follow in the frozen north's winter darkness, even with his lead dog Togo at the head of the team.  Still, he made it to Golovin, 91 miles down the trail, after travelling a total of 260 miles.

Finally, after the serum was carried by 19 other mushers, Gunner Kaasen drove his tired dog team, lead by another of Seppala's lead dogs, Balto, down an almost deserted First Avenue in Nome on February 2, 1925.  The serum had reached the town in an epic run lasting 127-1/2 hours.

The idea of having a race over the Iditarod Trail was conceived by the late Dorothy G. Page.   Dorothy Page was chairman of the Wasilla-Knik Centennial, celebrating the 100-year anniversary of Alaska's purchase from Russia.  Her task was to find projects to celebrate the centennial year in 1967.

She was intrigued that dog teams could travel over land that was not accessible by automobile.   Page, a resident of Wasilla and self-made historian, recognized the importance that sled dogs and the Iditarod Trail played in Alaska's colorful history.

She presented the possibility of a race over a portion of the Iditarod Trail to an enthusiastic Joe Redington Sr., a musher from the Knik area.  Soon they began promoting the idea of the Iditarod Race.

The Aurora Dog Mushers Club, along with men from the Adult Camp in Sutton helped clear years of over-growth from the first nine miles of the Iditarod Trail in time to put on the first short Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in 1967.  A $25,000 pruse was offered in that race, with Joe Redington donating one acre of their land at Flat Horn Lake adjacent to the Iditarod Trail to help raise the funds.  Contestants from all over Alaska and even two mushers from Massachusetts entered that first Iditarod Race.  Isaac Okleasik, from Teller Alaska won the race with his team of large working dogs.  The short race was put on again in 1969.

In 1973, the goal was to have the race to all the way to the ghost town of Iditarod about 500 miles down the trail.  However, in 1972, the US Army reopened the trail as a winter exercise and in 1973 the decision was made to take the race the 1,000 plus miles to Nome.  Redington and Page were instrumental in getting the first long Iditarod Race on its way to Nome in 1973, amidst comments that it couldn't be done.  There were many that believed it was crazy to send a bunch of mushers out into the vast uninhabited Alaskan wilderness.

Redington worked with Tom Johnson and Gleo Huyck to organize the race, but when Redington guaranteed a purse of $50,000, the mushing community was astounded.  At the time, there wasn't $50,000 in prize money offered for all the dog races in the world combined.  But the promised purse became reality when old World War II Eskimo Scouts leader Colonel "Muktuk" Marston donated $10,000 and the Bank of the North approved the cosigning of a $30,000 loan for Redington by local businessman Bruce Kendall.  Redington put up his Knik home as collateral, and the frantic fund-raising effort kept him from entering the race he created.

When the first Saturday in March arrived in 1973, thirty-six dog teams lined up at the Anchorage starting line.  As they set out on the trail, the issue was whether anyone would finish.  Yet a feeling of excitement prevailed, being in on the ground floor of something new, perhaps a once-in-a-lifetime race.  Twenty-two mushers completed the race to Nome that year.   John Schultz finished in 32 days, 5 hours, nearly two weeks behind Dick Wilmarth the winner.  Schultz was the first recipient of the "Red Lantern" award that is still awarded for last place.  A statement to the last musher that those who passed that way before will leave a light burning for you.

The race has started in downtown Anchorage since 1983.  The teams leave the start line at the corner of 4th and "D" streets at two minute intervals, starting at 10:00 a.m. the first Saturday in March.   The mushers follow bike trails through Anchorage and out to Tudor Road.  They mush along the Glenn Highway into the VFW Post 9785 in Eagle River, about 17 miles from the start.  From there the dogs are loaded into dog trucks and taken home for the night.  While the race actually starts in Anchorage, in 1995, the rules were changed so that the Anchorage to Eagle River portion does not count in the overall time to Nome.

A "widow's lamp" is lit in Nome, at the trails end, at the start of the race 10:00 a.m. on Saturday.  The lamp hangs at the official finish line and following trail traditions, will remain lit until the last musher crosses the finish line.

On Sunday, mushers will again line up at the designated restart location.  The restart location varies from Wasilla to Willow depending upon the weather and snow conditions.  Wasilla is approximately 40 miles north of Anchorage.  At 10:00 a.m., the first team will depart on its way to Nome.  Teams leave the starting line at two-minute intervals.  The starting time differential is adjusted later in the race during the team's mandatory 24-hour stop.

From Wasilla, they travel to Knik Lake, the last checkpoint on the road system.  Once the mushers leave the Knik checkpoint, they are off the road system for the duration of the race.  They head out to the Yentna Station Roadhouse and Skwentna and then up through Finger Lake, Rainy Pass, over the Alaska Range and down the other side to the Kuskokwim River.  Through the farewell burn and over the Kuskokwim Range to Ophir.  The race route is alternated every other year.  Even years going north from Ophir through Cripple, Ruby and Galena.  Odd years going south from Ophir through Iditarod, Shageluk, and Anvik.   Finally, they're on the coast at Unalakleet just 261 miles from Nome.

No one knows the true distance of the race for sure, because the trail weaves through the natural terrain and its routing is often affected by weather.  Race officials use 1,049 as the symbolic distance (Alaska was the 49th state to be admitted to the union) but most estimates suggest the trail is at least 1,100 miles long.

One characteristic emerging in the first Iditarod has persisted.  The race is for everybody, the fast and the slow.   For many, the most coveted prize of all is earning an Iditarod finisher's belt buckle.