Anchorage, Alaska – The city of Nome by Alaska Gold Rush faced a gloomy winter. It was hundreds of miles from anywhere, cut by the frozen sea and the implacable snowstorms, and under a siege of a contagious disease known as the “strangulative angel” by the way children were suffocated.
Now, 100 years later, Nome is remembering its saviors: sled dogs and mushers that ran for more than five days through hypothermia, freezing, storm force winds and blinding bleaching to offer Salvador and Salvador serum and Liberate the community of diphtheria control.
Among the events that celebrate the centenary of the “Great Race of Mercy” of 1925 are conferences, an impulse of dog food and a recreation of the final stage of the relay, all organized by the Nome Kennel Club.
“There is a lot of fluff around celebrations like this, but we wanted to remember the mushers and their dogs that have been at the center of this heroic effort and … Spotlight Mushing as something still viable for the state of Alaska.” Diana Haecker, a member of the Kennel Club Board and co -owner of the oldest newspaper in Alaska, The Nome Nugget, said.
“People simply dropped what they were doing,” he said. “These Mushers prepared their teams and left, although it was really cold and challenging conditions on the road.”
Other communities are also marking the anniversary, including the town of Nenana, where the relay began, and Cleveland, Ohio, where the most famous serum career participant, a Husky mixture called Balto, is filled and exhibited in a museum.
Jonathan Hayes, a Maine resident who has been working to preserve the genetic line of sled dogs conducted in the race by the famous Musher Leonhard Seppala, is recreating the trip. Hayes left Nenana on Monday with 16 Siberian sled dogs of Seppala, registered descendants of the SEPPALA team.
Diphthe is a disease in the air that makes a thick and suffocating film develop in the back of the throat; It was once a main cause of death for children. The antitoxin used to treat it was developed in 1890 and a vaccine in 1923; It is now extremely rare in the United States
Nome, the largest community in Western Alaska, had about 1,400 residents a century ago. His most recent supply vessel had arrived the previous autumn, before the Bering Sea was freezing, without any dose of antitoxin. Those that the local doctor, Curtis Welch, had was outdated, but was not worried. I had not seen a case of diphtheria in the 18 years I had practiced in the area.
In a matter of months, that changed. On a telegram, Welch begged the United States public health service to send serum: “An epidemic of diphtheria is almost inevitable here.”
The first death was a 3 -year -old boy on January 20, 1925, followed the next day by a 7 -year -old girl. At the end of the month, there were more than 20 confirmed cases. The city was placed under quarantine.
The hospitals on the west coast had doses of antitoxins, but it would take time to take them to Seattle and then to a ship for Seward, a port without ice south of Anchorage. Meanwhile, he found enough for 30 people in a hospital in Anchorage.
I still had to get to Nome. The airplanes with outdoor cabins were discarded as inadequate for the weather. There were no roads or trains that would come to Nome.
On the other hand, the officials sent the serum by rail to Nenana inside Alaska, about 675 miles (1,086 kilometers) from Nome through the frozen Yukon River and the mail paths.
Thanks to the new telegraph lines of Alaska and the spread of the radio, the nation followed, captivated, like 20 Mushers, many of them native Alaska, with more than 150 dogs transmitted the serum to Nome. They fought in deep snow, bleached so severe that they could not see the dogs in front of them and temperatures that threaten the life that were sometimes immersed up to less 60 degrees Fahrenheit (less 51 degrees Celsius).
The antitoxin was transported in glass vials covered with padded bedspreads. Not a single road broke.
SEPPALA, a Norwegian settler, left Nome to meet the supply near the midpoint and start the return trip. His team, led by his Togo dog, traveled more than 250 miles (320 kilometers) of the relay, including a treacherous section through Norton’s frozen sound.
After approximately 5 1/2 days, the serum reached its destination on February 2, 1925. A head of the first page at San Francisco Chronicle proclaimed: “Victors dogs on Blizzard in battle to undermine Nome.”
The official record listed five deaths and 29 diseases. The toll is likely to be higher; Alaska’s natives were not tracked precisely.
SEPPALA and TOGO lost the center of attention that was for their assistant, Gunnar Kaasen, who led the dog team led by Balto to Nome. Balto was another of Seppala’s dogs, but was accustomed only to transport the load after it was considered too slow to be in a competitive team.
Balto was Immortalized in movies and with statues in the central Park of New York and one in Anchorage intended as a tribute to all sled dogs. He received a bone -shaped key from the city of Los Angeles, where the legendary film actress Mary Pickford placed a crown from his neck.
But he and several team members were finally sold and held in miserable conditions in a ten cents museum in Los Angeles. After learning about his difficult situation, an Ohio businessman led an effort to raise money to take them to Cleveland. After dying in 1933, Balto was mounted and exhibited at the Cleveland Natural History Museum.
Today, the world’s most famous event is the IDITAROD TRAIL SLED DOG RACEThat it is not based on the serum race but on the Iditarod path, a Seward a Nome supply route. However, Iditarod’s organizers are marking the centenary of the serum race, with a series of items on their website and selling replicas of the medallions that his serum Run Musher received a century ago, said the spokesman of the Shannon Noonan race In an email. Iditarod this year begins on March 1.
“The serum race demonstrated the critical role played by sled dogs in the survival and communication of the remote communities of Alaska, while Iditarod has become a celebration of that tradition and the pioneer spirit of Alask Noonan.
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