The Dogs That Made The Serum Run To Nome, Alaska Were Very, Very Good Dogs

Today in 1925, a telegram sets off one of the most remarkable crossings of its time: the famous Serum Run to Nome, Alaska.

Balto Snow GIFfrom Balto GIFs

The telegram came from Dr. Curtis Welch, Nome’s only doctor.

He had seen a growing number of patients develop diphtheria, which was extremely contagious and extremely dangerous, especially to children.

Welch knew diphtheria could run wild through a small community like Nome, which was essentially cut off from the rest of the world in winter.

There was a treatment in those days, an antitoxin, but the local supply had long since expired.

And the fresh supply Welch had ordered couldn’t be delivered before Nome’s port closed for the season.

The doctor outlined the bad news in his telegram to Alaskan health officials.

They had 300,000 units of antitoxin on hand, enough to could slow the outbreak, but the bigger challenge was getting those life-saving treatments from Anchorage to Nome.

There was no road or railroad between the two cities.

Ships were too slow, and flying in that weather wasn’t an option.

(Even if it was, the usual biplane pilots weren’t even in Alaska at the time.)

So the powers that be turned to dogsled teams, which would pick up the treatment at the nearest rail stop and bring it west.

That stop – Nenana, Alaska – was 674 miles away from Nome.

And this was a particularly brutal January, with heavy snow, harsh winds and temperatures well below zero.

Not all the dogs made it through the relay.

Some of the humans ended up with serious frostbite and hypothermia; one driver’s hands froze around his sled’s handlebar, and people had to pour hot water over him to get him loose.

But they pulled it off in 127 ½ hours, with every single unit of antitoxin still intact.

The country hailed the mushers and their dogs: two of them, Togo and Balto, became canine celebrities for a time, with statues and movies made in their honor.

They did have a very unpleasant period where they were living in very poor conditions as part of a kind of vaudeville sideshow, but after a public appeal by those who remembered the Serum Run, several of the dogs ended up at the Cleveland Zoo.

It was a comfortable and well-deserved retirement for some very, very good dogs.