Great Race Of Mercy

The 1925 serum run to Nome, also known as the Great Race of Mercy and The Serum Run, was a transport of diphtheria antitoxin by dog sled relay across the U.S. territory of Alaska by 20 mushers and about 150 sled dogs across in days, saving the small town of Nome and the surrounding communities from a developing epidemic of diphtheria.

Both the mushers and their dogs were portrayed as heroes in the newly popular medium of radio and received headline coverage in newspapers across the United States. Balto, the lead sled dog on the final stretch into Nome, became the most famous canine celebrity of the era after Rin Tin Tin, and his statue is a popular tourist attraction in both New York City's Central Park and downtown Anchorage, Alaska, but it was Togo's team which covered much of the most dangerous parts of the route and ran the farthest: Togo's team covered while Balto's team ran . The publicity also helped spur an inoculation campaign in the U.S. which dramatically reduced the threat of the disease.

Location and geography

Nome, Alaska, lies approximately two degrees south of the Arctic Circle, and while greatly diminished from its peak of 20,000 inhabitants during the gold rush at the turn of the 20th century, it was still the largest town in northern Alaska in 1925, with 455 Alaska Natives and 975 settlers of European descent.

From November to July, the port on the southern shore of the Seward Peninsula of the Bering Sea was icebound and inaccessible by steamship. The only link to the rest of the world during the winter was the Iditarod Trail, which ran from the port of Seward in the south, across several mountain ranges and the vast Alaska Interior, to the town of Nome. In Alaska and other subarctic regions, the primary source of mail and needed supplies in 1925 was the dog sled; however, within a decade, bush pilots would become the dominant method of transportation during the winter months.

Outbreak and call for help

In the winter of 1924–1925, Curtis Welch was the only doctor in Nome. He and four nurses, working at the small Maynard Columbus Hospital, served the town and the surrounding area. After discovering the hospital's entire batch of diphtheria antitoxin had expired, Welch placed an order for more. However, the replacement shipment did not arrive before the port was closed by ice for the winter, and more could not be shipped in to Nome until spring.

In December 1924, several days after the last ship left the port, Welch treated a few children for what he first diagnosed as sore throats or tonsillitis, initially dismissing diphtheria as a possibility; given its contagious nature, Welch would have expected to see more symptoms in family members or others around town, instead of a few isolated cases. In the next few weeks, after the number of cases grew and four children died—whom Welch had not been able to autopsy—he became increasingly concerned about diphtheria.

By mid-January 1925, Welch officially diagnosed the first case of diphtheria in a three-year-old boy who died only two weeks after first becoming ill. The following day, when a seven-year-old girl presented the same tell-tale symptoms of diphtheria, Welch attempted to administer some of the expired antitoxin to see if it might still have any effect, but the girl died a few hours later. Realizing that an epidemic was imminent, Welch called Nome's mayor George Maynard that same evening to arrange an emergency town council meeting. The council immediately implemented a quarantine. The following day, on January 22, 1925, Welch sent radio telegrams to all other major towns in Alaska alerting them of the public health risk. He also requested assistance from the U.S. Public Health Service in Washington, D.C.:

Despite the quarantine, there were over 20 confirmed cases of diphtheria and at least 50 more at risk by the end of January. Without antitoxin, it was expected that in the surrounding region's population of around 10,000 people, the mortality rate could be close to 100 percent. A previous influenza pandemic had hit the area in 1918, causing fatalities in about 50% percent of the native population of Nome and 8% of the native population of Alaska. More than 1,000 people died in northwest Alaska, and approximately 2,000 across the state. The majority were Alaska Natives who did not have any resistance to either disease.

Problem solving

At the January 24 meeting of the board of health, superintendent Mark Summers of the Hammon Consolidated Gold Fields proposed a dogsled relay using two fast teams. One would start at Nenana, Alaska, the closest railhead on the Alaska Railroad, and the other at Nome, and they would meet roughly halfway in the town of Nulato. The trip from Nulato to Nome normally took 30 days Curtis Welch estimated that the serum would last only six days under the brutal conditions of the trail. Summers's employee, the Norwegian sled dog trainer and musher Leonhard Seppala, was chosen for the 630-mile (1,014km) round trip from Nome to Nulato and back. He had previously made the run in a record-breaking four days, won the All-Alaska Sweepstakes three times, and had become famous for his athletic ability and rapport with his Siberian huskies. His lead dog, the 12-year-old Togo, was equally famous for his leadership, intelligence, and ability to sense danger.

Maynard proposed flying the antitoxin by plane. In 1925, planes were a relatively new technology, and Alaska's harsh winter weather made them unreliable. Several test flights had been conducted the previous year between Fairbanks and McGrath, Alaska, to determine how well a reliable aircraft could handle the winter conditions. The longest test flight flew a distance of only , a little under half the necessary distance between Nenana and Nome. Furthermore, the only planes operating in Alaska in 1925 were three vintage biplanes, which had been dismantled for the winter; their open cockpits and water-cooled engines would make these planes unfit for the trip, as well. Although it was potentially quicker, the proposal to deliver the antitoxin by flight was rejected by the board of health. Instead, they voted unanimously for the dogsled relay. Seppala was notified that evening and immediately began preparations for the trip.

The U.S. Public Health Service had located 1.1 million units of serum in West Coast hospitals which could be shipped to Seattle, Washington, and then transported to Alaska. The next ship north would not arrive in Seattle until January 31, and it would take another six to seven days to arrive in Seward. On January 26, however, 300,000 forgotten units of the antitoxin were located in a hospital in Anchorage. The supply was wrapped in glass vials, then padded quilts, and finally a metallic cylinder weighing a little over . At Governor Scott Bone's order, it was immediately shipped to Nenana and arrived the next day. While not sufficient to defeat the epidemic, the 300,000 units could slow the spread of the disease until the larger shipment arrived.

The temperatures across the Alaskan Interior were at 20-year lows due to a high pressure system from the Arctic; in Fairbanks the temperature was . Winds reaching speeds of caused snow to cover the Alaska Panhandle in snowdrifts up to tall. Travel by sea was hazardous, and across the Interior most forms of transportation shut down. Furthermore there were limited hours of daylight to fly due to the polar night.

Relay

The mail route from Nenana to Nome spanned in total. It crossed the barren Alaska Interior, following the Tanana River for to the village Tanana at the junction with the Yukon River, and then following the Yukon for to Kaltag. The route then passed west over the Kaltag Portage to Unalakleet on the shore of Norton Sound. The route then continued for northwest around the southern shore of the Seward Peninsula with no protection from gales and blizzards, including a stretch across the shifting ice of the Bering Sea.

Wetzler contacted Tom Parson, an agent of the Northern Commercial Company, which contracted to deliver mail between Fairbanks and Unalakleet. Telephones and telegraphs turned the drivers back to their assigned roadhouses. The mail carriers held a revered position in the territory, and were the best dog mushers in Alaska. The majority of relay drivers across the Interior were native Athabaskans, direct descendants of the original dog mushers.

The first musher in the relay was "Wild Bill" Shannon, who was handed the package at the train station in Nenana on January 27 at 9:00 pm AKST by night. Despite a temperature of , Shannon left immediately with his team of 9 inexperienced dogs, led by Blackie. The temperature began to drop, and the team was forced onto the colder ice of the river because the trail had been destroyed by horses.

Despite jogging alongside the sled to keep warm, Shannon developed hypothermia. He reached Minto at 3 am, with parts of his face black from frostbite. The temperature was . After warming the serum by the fire and resting for four hours, Shannon dropped three dogs and left with the remaining 8. The three dogs died shortly after Shannon returned for them, and a fourth may have died as well.

Arrival in Minto

Half-Athabaskan Edgar Kalland arrived in Minto the night before, and was sent back to Tolovana, traveling the day before the relay. Shannon and his team arrived in bad shape at 11 am, and handed over the serum. After warming the serum in the roadhouse, Kalland headed into the forest. The temperature had risen to , and according to at least one report the owner of the roadhouse at Manley Hot Springs had to pour water over Kalland's hands to get them off the sled's handlebar when he arrived at 4 pm.

No new cases of diphtheria were diagnosed on January 28, but two new cases were diagnosed on January 29. The quarantine had been obeyed but lack of diagnostic tools and the contagiousness of the strain rendered it ineffective. More units of serum were discovered around Juneau the same day. While no count exists, the estimate based on weight is roughly 125,000 units, enough to treat 4 to 6 patients. The crisis had become headline news in newspapers, including San Francisco, Cleveland, Washington D.C., and New York, and spread to the radio sets which were just becoming common. The storm system from Alaska hit the contiguous United States, bringing record lows to New York, and freezing the Hudson River.

A fifth death occurred on January 30. Maynard and Sutherland renewed their campaign for flying the remaining serum by plane. Different proposals included flying a large aircraft from Seattle to Nome, carrying a plane to the edge of the pack ice via Navy ship and launching it, and the original plan of flying the serum from Fairbanks. Despite receiving headline coverage across the country, the support of several cabinet departments, and from Arctic explorer Roald Amundsen, the plans were rejected by experienced pilots, the Navy, and Governor Bone. Thompson's editorials waxed virulent against those opposing using airplanes.

In response, Bone decided to speed up the relay and authorized additional drivers for Seppala's leg of the relay, so they could travel without rest. Seppala was still scheduled to cover the most dangerous leg, the shortcut across Norton Sound, but the telephone and telegraph systems bypassed the small villages he was passing through, and there was no way to tell him to wait at Shaktoolik. The plan relied on the driver from the north catching Seppala on the trail. Summers arranged for drivers along the last leg, including Seppala's colleague Gunnar Kaasen.

From Manley Hot Springs, the serum passed through largely Athabascan hands before George Nollner delivered it to Charlie Evans at Bishop Mountain on January 30 at 3 am. The temperature had warmed slightly, but at , was dropping again. Evans relied on his lead dogs when he passed through ice fog where the Koyukuk River, flowing into the Yukon, had broken through and surged over the ice, but forgot to protect the groins of his two short-haired mixed breed lead dogs with rabbit skins. Both dogs collapsed with frostbite, with Evans having to take their place himself pulling the sled. He arrived at 10 am; both dogs were dead. Tommy Patsy departed within half an hour.

The serum then parted ways with the Yukon River as the river turned south and the trail crossed the Kaltag Portage west to the coast. Athabascan Jack Nicolai aka "Jackscrew" took it up the first half of the portage to Old Woman Cabin and Victor Anagick of the Inupiat village Unalakleet, having driven up to meet him there, took it down the second half, handing it to his fellow villager Myles Gonangnan on the shores of Norton Sound in Unalakleet on January 31 at 5 am. Gonangnan saw the signs of a storm brewing, and decided not to take the shortcut across the dangerous ice of the Sound. He departed at 5:30 am, and as he crossed the hills, "the eddies of drifting, swirling snow passing between the dog's legs and under the bellies made them appear to be fording a fast running river." The whiteout conditions cleared as he reached the shore, and the gale-force winds drove the wind chill to . At 3 pm he arrived at Shaktoolik. Seppala was not there, but Henry Ivanoff was waiting just in case.

On January 30, the number of cases in Nome had reached 27 and the antitoxin was depleted. According to a reporter living in Nome, "All hope is in the dogs and their heroic drivers ... Nome appears to be a deserted city." With the report of Gonangnan's progress on January 31, Welch believed the serum would arrive there in February.

Connection on Norton Sound

Leonhard Seppala and his dog sled team, with his lead dog Togo, traveled from Nome from January 27 to January 31 into the oncoming storm. They took the shortcut across the Norton Sound, and headed toward Shaktoolik. The temperature in Nome was a relatively warm , but in Shaktoolik the temperature was estimated at , and the gale of .

Henry Ivanoff's team ran into a reindeer and got tangled up just outside Shaktoolik. Seppala still believed he had more than to the original relay point in Nulato to go and had raced to get off the Norton Sound before the storm hit. He was passing the team when Ivanoff shouted, "The serum! The serum! I have it here!"

Seppala turned around with the serum but it was dark by the time he got to Ungalik. But with the news of the worsening epidemic Ivanoff had shared, he decided not to stop and once again set out to brave the storm across the of exposed open ice of the Norton Sound. The temperature was estimated at , but the wind chill with the gale

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