The Iditarod - An Amazing Race!

What is the Iditarod?

Iditarod is a magical word not only in Alaska, but also in the US nation and in many other parts of the world. It is a word that raises a variety of images and emotions in different people. To the oldest Alaskan Natives, it recalls the approximate name of a 19th century Inuit (Athabaskan) village on a small river now also called Iditarod. To "Sourdoughs" and others familiar with the State's history, Iditarod refers to a now-abandoned Gold Rush town and its associated mining district in south-central Alaska. To the historian, Iditarod refers to the 1910 Seward-to-Nome mail trail surveyed and cleared by the U.S. Army's Alaska Road Commission. Today the name Iditarod, above all in the National and International recognition, symbolizes the dramatic, long distance sled dog race between Anchorage and Nome held each March since 1973.

 Nome & Iditarod History
Nome was an important town during the Yukon Gold Rush (1896-1906).

 


Nome, Alaska in 1907

Nome, Alaska in 2010

In 1900, from January to May, 2,000 miners went down the Yukon to Nome, and ships sailed from Seattle for the Nome gold beaches with up to 20,000 passengers on board. Throughout the summer of 1900, thousands descended on the Nome beaches to dig for gold in the sand. 

Gold miner panning 
for gold

Miner with his pack dog

From 1901 through 1904, big things happened in Alaska and in Seattle. In 1908, the Alaska Road Commission began an effort to open an overland route from Seward to Nome. This overland route, called the Iditarod Trail, was completed in 1911 by hardy crews working through bitter minus 50⁰F (-46⁰C) winter temperatures. Within a year of its completion, thousands of gold-seekers hiked or “mushed” along this government trail to the Iditarod gold fields, and gold-carrying sled-dog teams became a regular sight along the trail.

From November to July, Nome is icebound and inaccessible by ship. The only link to the rest of the world during the winter was the Iditarod Trail. This trail begins in the city of Seward in the south and runs 938 miles (1,510 km) north across several mountain ranges and the vast Alaska interior before reaching Nome, in the north.

In 1925, an epidemic of diphtheria had broken out in this gold rush city. The townsfolk were greatly concerned because there was not an adequate supply of antitoxin serum to treat the infected children. Unless some additional medicine could be found and transported to Nome, many would die. 
 

Dr. Curtis Welch, Nome’s only doctor, frantically telegraphed Fairbanks, Anchorage, Seward and Juneau asking for help in getting the medicine. Anchorage responded that they had enough serum. However, once the doctor located the serum, he had to figure out a way to transport it to Nome in the shortest time possible. It was not an easy task to get things to Nome rapidly in mid-January! Nome was extremely remote. Even though it was located on the coast, the sea was frozen eight months of the year and there was no access by boat. There were no railroads or conventional roads linking the small community to the rest of the state. The few airplanes located in Anchorage were unavailable to fly. The only means of getting the serum to the dying children was by dog team. Weather permitting, sled-dogs were dependable, but they typically travel only six miles (9.6 kilometers) per hour.

Once they decided to use the dogs teams, the serum was packed into an insulated container and sent as far as it could go by train, to the end of the line in Nenana, but there was still another 674 (1078 kilometers) miles to Nome. It normally took a single musher an entire month to cover that stretch of trail. To speed up the delivery, they decided to organize a relay team of mushers. The first musher took the insulated cylinder serum 52 miles where he passed the life saving cargo to a second musher who then traveled thirty-one miles before handing off the cylinder to yet another musher. From musher to musher the relay continued until a total of twenty sled dog drivers and their teams cooperated to get the medicine to Nome despite brutal weather conditions of blinding snow and temperatures as low as -64⁰F (-53⁰C). The serum arrived in Nome at 5:40am on February 2, 1925 barely a week after leaving Anchorage. 

The Last Great Race on Earth
Today, the Iditarod, now in its 32nd year, commemorates this 674-mile relay race from Nenana to Nome. You can’t compare it to any other competitive event in the world! A race over 1150 miles of the roughest, most beautiful terrain Mother Nature has to offer. She throws jagged mountain ranges, frozen river, dense forest, desolate tundra and miles of windswept coast at the mushers and their dog teams. Add to that the temperatures far below zero, winds that can cause a complete loss of visibility, the hazards of overflow, long hours of darkness and treacherous climbs and side hills, and you have the Iditarod. A race extraordinaire; a race only possible in Alaska!

Iditarod History / The Beginning

The idea of having a race over the Iditarod Trail was conceived by the late Dorothy G. Page. In 1964, Page was chairman of a committee working on projects to celebrate Alaska’s Centennial Year in 1967. She was intrigued that dog teams could travel over land that was not accessible by automobile. She recognized the importance of an awareness of the use of sled dogs as working animals and of the Iditarod Trail and the important part it played in Alaska’s colorful history. She presented the possibility of a race over the Iditarod Trail to other enthusiastic mushers in the area. 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 27-mile (43 kilometers) Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in 1967. Contestants from all over Alaska and even two contestants from Massachusetts entered that first Iditarod Race, but a newcomer, Isaac Okleasik, from Teller, Alaska, won the race with his team of large working dogs. The short race was put on again in 1969.

The US Army cleared and reopened the trail as a winter exercise in 1973, and 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 on its way to Nome in 1973, in spite of comments that it couldn’t be done. There were many who believed it was crazy to send a bunch of mushers out into the vast uninhabited Alaskan wilderness. But the race was on! Twenty-two mushers finished that year. To date, there have been over 400 finishers. Mushers have come from Canada, Czechoslovakia, France, Great Britain, Germany, Switzerland, Norway, Italy, Japan, Austria, Australia, Sweden and the Soviet Union as well as from about 20 different states in this country.

Know as the “Mother of the Iditarod,” the late Dorothy G. Page once stated that, “To keep the spirit of the Iditarod the same. I don’t ever want to see high pressure people getting in and changing the spirit of the race. We brought the sled dog back and increased the number of mushers. It is really an Alaskan event. I think the fact that it starts in Anchorage and then ends in Nome has opened up a whole new area for people in Alaska. I think they appreciate that. It puts them in touch with the pioneer spirit.”

Next Week --- The Iditarod Today