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March 3, 2006
Balto and Togo
by Brian Yanity, insurgent49

     There is only one Alaskan who has a statue in New York City’s Central Park ... Balto the sled dog. It may seem incongruous to see a monument to Alaskana on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, mere blocks away from both Madison Avenue and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but in his day Balto was probably the most famous dog in the world. The plaque below the Central Park statue reads:

DEDICATED TO THE INDOMITABLE SPIRIT OF
THE SLED DOGS
THAT RELAYED ANTITOXIN SIX HUNDRED MILES OVER ROUGH ICE
ACROSS TREACHEROUS WATERS THROUGH ARCTIC BLIZZARDS FROM
NENANA TO THE RELIEF OF STRICKEN NOME IN THE
WINTER OF 1925

ENDURANCE    FIDELITY    INTELLIGENCE

     Balto was the lead dog on the final leg of the January 1925 serum run to Nome, also known as the “Great Race of Mercy”, which transported diphtheria antitoxin from Anchorage to Nome in order to combat an outbreak of the disease.

     While today’s Iditarod race is often criticized for being too commercialized and for alleged mistreatment of the dogs, it is important to remember the original spirit of the race: saving people’s lives under adverse conditions.

     From 1908 to 1918, the All-Alaska Sweepstakes was the seminal competitive sled dog race, running 208 miles from Nome to Candle and back. This All-Alaska Sweepstakes was predecessor to the modern-day Iditarod, though the heroes of the Nome serum run of 1925 continue to be the contemporary race’s true inspiration.

     In January 1925, doctors realized that a potentially deadly diphtheria epidemic was poised to sweep through Nome's young people. The Inuit children in particular had no immunity to the "white man's disease".  By January 24th, several of Nome’s children had already died from the disease and 20 more cases of diphtheria had been diagnosed.

     The disease could easily spread across the northwestern Alaska villages of which Nome was the hub, and regionally about 10,000 people were at risk of the disease. Fresh in everyone’s minds was an influenza epidemic in 1918-19 killed over a thousand people in northwest Alaska, the majority of who were Inuit. Though this influenza was not the same disease as diphtheria, the degree of risk to the population was similar.

     The only serum that could stop the outbreak was a supply of 300,000 ‘units’ of diphtheria anti-toxin at the Anchorage Railroad Hospital, nearly a thousand miles away. This amount of serum was not enough to completely eliminate of a full-scale epidemic, but it was enough to hold the disease at bay before a second shipment of anti-toxin arrived. Nome’s harbor was frozen, and Bush piloting was in its infancy. The only two aircraft in the state were two World War I-era biplanes with open cockpits, and had never been flown successfully in the winter.

     Given the choices, territorial Governor Scott Bone authorized the transport of the 20 lb. -cylinder carrying the serum from Anchorage to Nenana by train, where it was relayed  by dogsled the remaining 674 miles to Nome. In total, 20 mushers and 150 dogs took part, facing a blizzard with unusually cold temperatures and strong winds. News coverage of the serum run was worldwide, and made newspaper headlines across the nation.

     At 5:30 AM on February 2, 1925, musher Gunnar Kaasen drove his team of 13 dogs, led by Balto, into Nome just five and a half days after the serum left Nenana. Kaasen was scheduled to transport the serum along the next-to-last leg of the relay, from Bluff to Point Relay. At Bluff, Charlie Olson passed the serum to Kaasen, who traveled through the night, in the middle of winds so severe that his sled flipped over and he almost lost the cylinder full of serum. Visibility was so poor that at times he could not even see the dogs harnessed closest to the sled.

     Kaasen reached Point Safety ahead of schedule on February 2, at 2 AM. Ed Rohn, the next musher in the relay, was sleeping, so Kaasen pressed on the remaining 25 miles to Nome.

     Kaasen then gave the serum to Dr. Curtis Welch, the only medical doctor in Nome, who distributed it to patients most in need. A second batch of serum from Seattle arrived in Seward five days later, and was transported to Nome in the same fashion, involving many of the same mushers as on the first relay. No further deaths from diphtheria were reported on the Seward Peninsula after the serum run.

     Prior to 1925, the disease killed 20,000 people a year in the U.S. The worldwide publicity the Nome serum run received helped spur widespread diphtheria inoculations, which greatly reduced that number. In the United States, there have been fewer than five cases of diphtheria a year reported since 1980, as the DPT (Diphtheria-Tetanus-Pertussis) vaccine is given to all school children. The 2005 Iditarod honored Jirdes Winther Baxter, the last remaining survivor of the 1925 Nome diphtheria outbreak.

     Balto and Kaasen became instant celebrities, and at the height of his fame in 1925, Balto starred in a 30-minute Hollywood movie entitled Balto’s Race to Nome. The next year in New York City, a bronze statue of the dog was erected in Central Park, and he and his team appeared in Madison Square Garden before a crowd of 20,000 people. 
Such fame proved fleeting in the Roaring Twenties, however, and within a year Balto and the rest of his team were reduced to a sideshow attraction. Early in 1927, Cleveland, Ohio residents raised $2,000 to purchase him and six of his team from a vaudeville sideshow operator in Los Angeles, who charged 10 cents at a ‘dime-a-look’ museum to view the dogs, which were by then mistreated and in poor health.

     Cleveland businessman George Kimball was outraged by the heroic dogs’ horrible living conditions, and organized the grassroots effort in Cleveland to quickly raise the funds needed to purchase the huskies.

     Balto and his six companions were given a permanent home at the Cleveland Zoo in March 1927, receiving a hero's welcome: more than 15,000 people visited the dogs on their first day.



     Balto died in Cleveland on March 14, 1933, at the age of 14. His carcass was then mounted and placed on display in the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, where he can be seen to this day. Much later, another statue of Balto was raised on the sidewalk in downtown Anchorage, where Fourth Avenue crosses D Street.



     Other mushers accused Kaasen of being a publicity hog. For example, two thirds of the distance of the serum run was covered by Alaska Native mushers, who were completely ignored by the national news coverage of the event.

     The longest and most hazardous stretch of the run was covered by musher Leonhard Seppala and his dog team led by Togo. Prior to the serum run, Seppala was already known as a three-time winner of the All Alaska Sweepstakes. Most mushers then and now consider Seppala and Togo to be the true heroes of the serum run. They made a round trip of 261 miles from Nome to Shaktoolik and back to Golovin, and delivered the serum a total of 91 miles, almost double the distance of any other team. Seppala was particularly upset when Balto, primarily a freight dog and not a fast racer, became the canine hero of the event.

     When choosing his team, Seppala had deliberately passed over the black husky in favor of Togo, a champion racer. Seppala was dismayed that the champion was neglected by the press, commenting "it was almost more than I could bear when the 'newspaper dog' Balto received a statue for his 'glorious achievements'".  

     Togo was named after Heihachiro Togo, a Japanese Admiral during the Russo-Japanese War.  He was the son of Suggen, Seppala's lead dog during the 1914 All-Alaska Sweepstakes. Togo and Seppala traveled 170 miles from Nome in three days, and picked up the serum from Henry Ivanoff just outside of Shaktoolik on January 31. The temperature was estimated at −30 °F, and the gale force winds causing a wind chill of −85 °F.

     On the return trip across the open ice of Norton Sound, the team was temporarily stranded after the ice they were crossing broke off and became an ice floe for several hours. When the ice drifted back to the solid sheet of ice crossing the bay, Seppala had Togo jump across the 5-foot gap to pull the floe closer to the shore while still in-harness. The harness snapped and fell into water, but Togo jumped into the water, and taking the traces in his jaw, pulled the floes together until it was safe for the rest of the team to jump. 

     The darkness and blizzard conditions prevented Seppala from being able to see the path, but Togo navigated to the roadhouse at Isaac's Point on the shore by 8 AM. After traveling 84 miles in one day, the team slept for six hours before continuing at 2 AM.
During the night the temperature dropped to −40 °F, and the winds again reached nearly hurricane-force. After reaching the next roadhouse in Golovin, Seppala passed the serum to Charlie Olsen, who in turn would pass it to Gunnar Kaasen and Balto. Immediately after the relay Togo and another dog on the team escaped to chase after reindeer, eventually returning to their kennel in Little Creek.

     Despite the greater publicity showered at the time on Kaasen and Balto, Seppala and Togo did not escape the limelight. In October 1926, Seppala, Togo, and the rest of the dog team went on a tour of the West Coast, and then across the continental United States and ending in New England. They drew large crowds at stadiums and department stores, and even appeared in a Lucky Strike cigarette campaign.

     In New York City, Seppala drove his team from the steps of City Hall along Fifth Avenue, and made a pass through Central Park. The team appeared multiple times during a ten-day stint at Madison Square Garden, which was being managed by Tom Rickard formerly of Nome, where Togo was awarded a gold medal by the famed polar explorer Roald Amundsen. In 1927, Seppala came to race in New England, where they won by huge margins in several dog sled races against local Chinook dogs.

     Both Kaasen and Seppala used teams of Siberian Huskies, which were first imported to Alaska in 1908 from Chukotka.  The new enthusiasm for the breed in New England led Seppala and partner Elizabeth Ricker to establish a Siberian kennel at Poland Spring, Maine (the same town as the famous mineral water brand). Most Siberian huskies in America today are descended from a serum run participant.

     Togo and the rest of his team had a comfortable retirement in Poland Spring, where he was euthanized on December 5, 1929 at the age of 16. Seppala had Togo custom mounted after his death, and today the dog is on display in a glass case at the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race Museum Headquarters in Wasilla.

     Today, Seppala is considered the father of the Siberian Husky breed in the U.S., which was accepted by the American Kennel Club as a registered breed in 1930. The first Iditarod Trail Seppala Memorial Race was held in 1967, and covered 25 miles near Anchorage. On the fifty-year anniversary of the serum run in 1975, a full-scale re-enactment was held between Nenana and Nome, taking six days longer than the original relay.

     Togo, Balto, and all of the dogs of the 1925 Nome serum run continue to serve as an inspiration to in today’s Alaska. They were not racing against time to find more oil or gold, but just to save lives. The story of Balto even proves that a lowly ‘freight dog’ can still become the hero of the day. To change society for the better, Alaska’s citizens need to be vigilante in even the darkest of times, and be willing fight for what is right against all the odds.  As the Balto plaque reads: “endurance, fidelity, intelligence.”

     Keep on pushing, straight ahead.







Brian Yanity is a graduate student at UAA, activist and freelance writer. He resides in an undisclosed location in Southcentral Alaska, and can be reached at byanity@insurgent49.com.
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