The dog heroes in the snows of Alaska in the desperate race for life

A bacterial outbreak exploded in the cold of Alaska in the winter of 1925 and a desperate race against time and particularly hostile weather. On January 19, a violent epidemic of diphtheria had begun to decimate especially the children of the city of Nome and threatened to spread rapidly with easily imaginable consequences, which could be averted by administering the serum as soon as possible. Except that the closest supplies were a good 1,700 kilometers away, in the city of Anchorage, and the closest train station was in Nenana, over a thousand kilometers away. It was impossible to use a ship, because the safety of the sea route was threatened by the presence of icebergs, and even the air route was precluded by the prohibitive atmospheric conditions with peaks of 40° below zero and strong winds. That race from Nenana to Nome could only be done with a desperate and extremely courageous move, relying on the packs of sled dogs that usually carried the mail along the tracks. The distance from the two centers was covered on average by couriers in 25 days. All that time, however, wasn’t there at all.

Five days without a moment to breathe and at full speed through the ice

For the last chance to stamp out the epidemic before it spread, increasing the already heavy death toll, a relay was organized with twenty packs of dogs, the first batch on January 27th, the last arriving in Nome at six on February 2nd. , each on average with stages of just over 80 kilometers. Men and dogs did it in just five days. The first musher who carried that vital package weighing approximately nine kilos, containing three hundred thousand doses of antitoxins, was Edgar Bill Shannon, the one who reached the final destination Gunnar Kaasen. In the middle, Edgar Kalland, Green, Johnny Folger, Titus Nikotai, Dave Corning, Henry Pitka, McCarty, Edgar Noller and his brother George, Tommy Patsy, Koyokuk, Victor Anagick, Myles Gonagnan, Leonhard Seppala in the most difficult and longest stretch, Charlie Olson who delivered the drugs to Kaasen for the last effort. But it was not a man who entered the story, but a dog, a husky named Balto, owned by the Norwegian Seppala, welcomed in Nome by a jubilation and celebrated immediately with a short film and two years later, in 1927, with a statue located in Central Park, New York.

Balto immediately became very famous, but the real protagonist was called Togo

Things didn’t go exactly according to the story immediately, nor as, in a fictionalized and engaging version, the famous and successful cartoon produced by Steven Spielberg, “Balto”, narrated in 1995, which moved the world. It was Seppala himself who provided a different version, but one overwhelmed by the original simplification of the chronicles, who at the time was considered the best sled dog driver in Alaska, according to the best Inuit tradition. The real hero was called Togo (named after the Japanese admiral who had won the naval battle of Tsushima in 1905 against the Russians), who under his guidance had in fact traveled the incredible distance of 146 kilometers: he was the leading sled dog , a Siberian husky, the fastest of all and the most respected by his master, also owner and trainer of Balto who, however, judged him capable only of ordinary tasks such as delivering the mail across the slopes of dog sledding. But it happened that it was Balto who carried the life-saving antitoxins after 127 and a half hours of an epic undertaking, for the last stretch, and so he and Kaasen immediately became the heroes of the Serum Run to be carried in triumph.

The triumph, the decline, the legend and the films of Spielberg and Disney

In the first wave of celebrity, Balto and his handler were invited on a triumphal tour of the United States, while Kaasen tried to re-establish the roles, also making use of the support of the famous explorer and compatriot Roald Amundsen who was his friend. Later, while Togo continued his activity, Balto was sold together with his sleigh companions to become an attraction in a circus. When a Cleveland dealer accidentally noticed their physical deterioration, he launched a radio subscription to purchase the seven dogs, which was responded to enthusiastically by school children. The most famous husky in history will thus end up in the Cleveland Zoo, lovingly cared for by the vet in an old age marked by numerous ailments suffered during an adventurous life among the snow and ice of Alaska.

Upon his death in 1933 at the age of 14, Balto’s body was embalmed and is still on display today at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. Togo, who died at the age of 16 in 1929 by euthanasia, had also been embalmed and ended up in a similar museum, but in Alaska, and only in 2019 with a Walt Disney production and then again in 2020 would he be celebrated by cinema. For him too, a statue in Seward Park in Manhattan, but without being as popular as his luckiest colleague in the 1924 undertaking. Seppala passed away at the age of ninety in Seattle, in 1967. The myth of the “Serum Race” has survived everyone.