The Cruelest Miles: the Heroic Story of Dogs and Men in a Race Against an Epidemic

by Gay Salisbury

  Togo sped through the course and headed straight for Seppala, who was kneeling at the finish line. As the two rolled over and wrestled in the snow, a few spectators wiped tears from their eyes.

  Now, as Seppala led the dogs through their drills in the Sawtooth Mountains, he felt lucky to have Togo with him for the round trip to Nulato. Togo had accompanied his master on every important journey, and together they had covered nearly 55,000 miles of trail. They had saved each other's lives many times crossing the frozen Norton Sound, and despite Togo's advanced age, Seppala still felt that wherever they went together, he traveled "with a sense of security."

  This time there would be no cash prizes, no records set. They would be saving lives.

  5: Flying Machines

  Aviator Carl Ben Eielson after completing the historic first airmail flight in Alaska in February of 1924, an achievement many believed was the beginning of the end of dog driving in Alaska. (Anchorage Museum of History and Art/B72.88.44)

  "Diphtheria Rages in Nome; No Antitoxin; Remedy Sought by Plane on 50-Day Dog Trail."

  - The New York Times, January 28, 1925

  On January 26, six day after the outbreak, on a bitterly cold Monday morning more than seven hundred miles northeast of Nome, a messenger from the local Signal Corps office knocked on the door of William Fentress Thompson's home on Eighth Avenue between Lacey and Noble streets in Fairbanks. Thompson, the publisher and editor of the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, was barely out of bed when he took the urgent message:

  Could aviator at Fairbanks put plane in commission within 48 hours to carry supply of antitoxin to Nome, for relief of diphtheria epidemic there? Answer quick, collect. Dan Sutherland, Alaskan delegate to U.S. Congress.

  Thompson dressed quickly. This was the first he had heard of an epidemic, and his mind raced for a lead for his evening newspaper. Thompson was in his early sixties, had been a newspaperman on the frontier for most of his life, and was by now accustomed to risk. He was a stern-looking man, with a sharp, angular face, but his eyes gave away his true personality. They were almond-shaped and peered out from behind his round spectacles with the mischievous excitement of a child with his hand in the cookie jar. He never shied away from controversy, and made a point of standing his ground, a trait that had earned him his fair share of critics and the nickname "Wrong Font," a play on his first two initials and the printer's symbol for the wrong typeface. Throughout his career, Thompson had seen gold towns boom and bust across the Yukon Territory and Alaska as the easy gold ran out in the creeks and rivers and the miners fled. For the past decade he had watched his own town of Fairbanks teeter on the edge of a similar fate—one he was no longer willing to accept.

  Built on the banks of the Chena River, a tributary of the Tanana, Fairbanks had been known as "the biggest log cabin city in the world" in the years following the discovery of gold in 1902. A bustling city and a main distribution point for the Interior, it linked the settlements with Alaska's ice-free ports to the south, first by trail and now by railroad. But as the placer gold diminished and the Interior villages emptied, the population of Fairbanks dwindled. World War I did further economic damage, and by 1925 the town was in a multi-year struggle to keep economic ruin at bay. So, by extension, was Thompson. His readership had been reduced by nearly half, and almost single-handedly he wrote, edited, and published each edition of the News-Miner. He made it his personal mission not only to inform readers but also to keep up their "flattened spirits," as one reader described. "Wrong Font" wrote about everything and anything, considering nothing too sacred or holy or political to be treated with his tabloid sensibility. He once expressed his disappointment with Fairbanks's children for not being mischievous enough on the eve of Halloween, and when the daughter of the chocolate manufacturer Ghirardelli died, the headline read: "Lost His Chocolate Drop."

  Thompson practiced a sort of booster journalism. He hunted down and supported schemes he thought could bring money into the town—whether or not the community approved. He had been instrumental in building a flour mill and a farmer's bank to finance the development of the Tanana Valley's agriculture, but he had also rebelled against a town council decision to demolish the red light district. During the early years of Prohibition he had allegedly taken money from liquor interests to use his newspaper to promote drinking. Certainly, Thompson enjoyed a drink and was a vocal enthusiast—liquor stores and bars generated cash.

  By 1925, his hard work and hard living had begun to take their toll. A year earlier he had sought medical attention outside the territory and returned in failing health. Thompson had been working and betting hard for the past few years on another important scheme he hoped would play a role in the town's salvation as well as his own: the fledging business of the Fairbanks Airplane Corporation. With the telegram in hand from the Alaskan delegate, he realized that a successful air rescue could energize the fledging airline and help lure business back to town. Thompson was not a mere opportunist. He had a sincere desire to help the people of Nome, and if he could arrange a mercy mission, well, he would be doing all of Alaska a favor.

  Thompson walked around the house with Sutherland's telegram. It was 50 below zero outside and there were very few people on the street. He reread the message as he considered the news from Nome and all its implications. This would be his last great campaign.

  Over the past three years, Thompson had become obsessed with the development of an arctic airline industry. Since the end of World War I the territory had become a beacon for former army pilots seeking adventure, and in 1923 Thompson and a group of businessmen formed the Farthest-North Airplane Company and hired a former army pilot from North Dakota named Carl Ben Eielson.

  Alaskan delegate Dan Sutherland had encouraged Eielson in 1922 to quit his job as a congressional guard in Washington, D.C., and move to Fairbanks to take up piloting in the northern territory. The two had spoken enthusiastically about the future of Alaskan flight, and Sutherland soon found a temporary job for the pilot.

  In Fairbanks, Eielson became fast friends with Thompson. They would stay up late in the publisher's cluttered office, "drinking homebrew and talking aviation." Together, they persuaded a banker, Dick Wood, to put up money for a plane, and they soon had sufficient funds to build a crude runway, a 1,200-foot-long, 600-foot-wide stump-ridden strip at one end of the local baseball field. It was good enough, and by the summer of 1923 Eielson was flying passengers on the company's single airplane, a Curtiss-built "Jenny." Just a few months later Farthest-North Airplane merged with its only rival, the Alaska Aerial Transportation Company, founded by a senior conductor of the railroad. The company was renamed the Fairbanks Airplane Corporation.

  The company now had three planes and two pilots, Eielson and a former barnstormer named Noel Wien. It was barely an airline, but the aircraft were up and flying, and they were the only ones in Alaska. Business was good in 1923 and 1924; the company flew everything from gold to supplies, and it ferried passengers from one city to the next. With few exceptions, everything arrived safely.

  The two pilots quickly built up reputations as courageous and capable men. Wien became the first pilot in North America to fly north of the Arctic Circle, and in February 1924, Eielson made the first winter flight in Alaska, a 260-mile trip from Fairbanks to McGrath on one of ten experimental air-mail runs scheduled by the U.S. Post Office for that winter. On two of those runs a makeshift flying ambulance had been set up and Eielson transported two patients back to the hospital in Fairbanks. Thompson had great faith in the company's future.

  About a month before the Nome epidemic broke out, Fairbanks Airplane sold approximately $15,000 worth of stock to raise money for a fourth and much larger plane, an eight-passenger aircraft with an enclosed cabin. At Thompson's urging, dozens of Fairbanks residents bought stakes in the company. Among those investors was Sutherland.

  Fairbanks lies midway between Tokyo and New York, and many then believed that a new air route across the Arctic to Asia could establish the In
terior town as the "crossroads city of the world." This was not a far-fetched idea in 1925; five years earlier, the U.S. Army Air Service had organized a joint flight of four planes from New York to Nome and back as a demonstration of long-distance travel and a clear illustration of the safety of the northern skies. The De Havilland biplane bombers, known as the Black Wolf Squadron because of the insignia painted on the fuselage, took off from Mitchell Field, Long Island, on July 15, 1920, and flew north to Canada and British Columbia, then across Alaska to Fairbanks, making fourteen stops. From there, they tracked the Tanana and Yukon rivers, and three hours later landed safely on a sandbar in the small town of Ruby. The weather was bad, and the four pilots were forced to lay over for two days before taking off for Nulato, further west down the Yukon River. Then they banked to the north over the mountains and made a bee-line for Nome. Low cloud cover forced the planes down to 2,500 feet, barely above the snow-capped peaks, and when they emerged over the Bering Sea coast, early squalls began to batter them. They flew through heavy snow all the way to Nome. A little over three hours after taking off from Ruby, the Black Wolf Squadron landed at the old parade grounds at Fort Davis.

  All of Nome had come out to watch. For days the town had been busy laying out a landing strip by widening and straightening the curved road at the old army fort. Welch and his nurses came, just in case there was an accident, and Seppala arrived with some of his dogs to look at the competition. Seppala was intrigued by the new technology and asked whether he could climb up into one of the cockpits "to try it on for size."

  The New York-to-Nome round-trip flight—a trip of more than 9,000 miles—was proof positive that long-distance aerial transportation was possible in the far north, and Thompson was now convinced that Nome could be saved with a single flight out of Fairbanks. All they needed was a pilot. And this was a problem. Eielson was in Washington trying to lobby the government to develop northern flight and authorize permanent air mail, and Wien had gone in search of the company's new aerial limousine.

  Thompson began to consider other options. He remembered that just a few days earlier he had met a Justice Department agent named Roy Darling who was in Fairbanks on business. The special investigator seemed like an even-tempered and responsible fellow, and Thompson remembered that he had flying experience.

  Before joining the Justice Department, the thirty-eight-year-old Darling had learned to fly and handle weaponry at the Royal Aeronautical School and the Royal School of Infantry in Canada, and he subsequently joined the U.S. Navy as an ordnance specialist in 1917. He was based at the Indian Head proving grounds in Maryland, where he had tested guns, bombs, and other weapons for the navy. It was clear that he was officer material: his superiors described him as "cheerful, forceful, active, and painstaking," and he was made a senior lieutenant.

  But his career had been cut short in May 1919. While en route from Washington, D.C., to Indian Head, the seaplane in which he was traveling malfunctioned and plunged 500 feet into the water. Darling broke his right femur, fractured his jaw, lacerated his lower lip, and broke the arches on both feet. A series of operations had left him with one leg shorter than the other and a severe limp. He was forced to walk with a cane, wore an elevator shoe, and had a very limited range of motion in one of his knees. His feet hurt and he often felt stiff; to make matters worse, many of his teeth had been broken or pushed askew and he chewed his food with difficulty.

  With his severe limp and his scarred face, Darling cut a relatively rugged figure, even by Alaskan standards. Courage and stoicism were much admired in the territory, as was a measure of self-sacrifice. Thompson did not fail to notice that this remade man, wounds and all, might just be the one for the job. He was tough and daring. From the point of view of an inveterate news-hound like Thompson, Darling was the mother lode, a made-to-order hero.

  Thompson too had a bad leg from an old accident, and he picked up his cane as soon as he finished his coffee and hobbled across the frozen town to see the "broken flyer." Darling was still in bed, so Thompson sat him up, plied him with coffee, and began to tell him the whole, sad story about Nome's children. It didn't take long to convince the man: despite his accident six years earlier, Darling was eager to fly.

  There were a few conditions, Darling explained. He would have to agree to keep the news from his wife, Caroline, who had settled into a new home in Anchorage, and he had to get permission from the Justice Department. He would also need clearance from the U.S. Navy so that if he crashed, Caroline would be eligible for benefits. (Darling was technically on medical leave from the navy because of his injuries, and he was not due for official retirement with honors and benefits until June 1925.)

  Darling was ready to go to Nome even if he "had to go hanging onto the tail of a kite." So Thompson asked him to go across town to examine the three planes stored in Stewart's warehouse and report back.

  Early that afternoon, Darling walked over to Third Avenue with a mechanic named Farnsworth and another man, Fred Struthers, the manager of Fairbanks Airplane, and the three of them rolled open the heavy doors of the warehouse. It was nearly dark. One of them turned on the flashlight they had borrowed from Smith's Hardware & Gun Store down the street. In the middle of the drafty warehouse they saw the two dilapidated airships, surplus training planes from World War I. There was a third old plane outside, and it was hardly in better shape.

  The aircraft had been sitting in the makeshift hangar ever since the flying season ended in October, and their wings had been dismantled. The fabric coverings, which had once stretched taut over the wooden frames, had become weak from all the rough landings and the wind and rain. Dirt and oil caked the engines and propellers like a second skin, and the control wires for the rudders and elevators were draped along the sides of the fuselage. The machines had been badly in need of an overhaul even before they were stored away last fall.

  The men examined each plane and agreed there was only one fit for the job. It was the Anchorage, a World War I surplus Standard J-1 biplane previously used to train army pilots. Its name was stenciled in red and black letters on the fuselage and its tail still carried the faded red, white, and blue insignia of the Army Air Service. The engine looked to be in fairly good shape; there was even an extra 30-gallon tank welded beneath the center of the uppermost wing. The Anchorage had been refitted with a 150-horsepower Hispano-Suiza engine, a fast and compact machine developed by a French automobile racer and used by combat pilots during the war. The moving parts, which included its drive shafts and overhead cams, had customized covers and were well protected from oil and dust. This was considered a great advantage in Alaska, where pilots would often use sandbars and marshes as impromptu landing strips.

  The tank had been added the previous summer for the historic first flight between Anchorage and Fairbanks. Wien had been at the controls for the entire 350-mile route, but was so unfamiliar with the route that he decided to follow the railroad tracks all the way to Fairbanks. While flying over a series of forest fires, his vision was obscured by black smoke and he came perilously close to losing his way. He narrowly escaped death when a trestle suddenly loomed up out of the smoke. But a miss was as good as a mile, and in the end, the company decided that the flight had been a great success.

  With the inspection over, Struthers, Farnsworth, and Darling shut the warehouse doors and walked over to Thompson's office to give him a complete report. The office was a small, cramped space with cases of lead type strewn among pieces of heavy printing equipment. There were no storm windows or double doors, and whenever someone entered the steam-heated room an icy fog rushed in behind them.

  The Anchorage could be put back in flying shape and would be ready to "hit the air for Nome, rain or shine" within three days, the men told Thompson. The flight itself would take no more than six hours. It was all Thompson needed to hear. When they left, he headed for his desk. Above it was a framed copy of his Michigan high school paper, The Howard City Snorter. He began to type and did not look up until he wa
s finished. A few hours later, Thompson had his story.

  That evening, the News-Miner carried the tale of Nome's plight. It read like a rallying cry for help and featured Roy Darling, whom Thompson had described as Nome's "Forlorn Hope."

  "The atmosphere is not right for flying, no flier would fly on a bet on such days as these...EVERYTHING is against the 'game,'" the lead story in the paper shouted. "Yet the emergency undoubtedly exists, and Fairbanks [is] in the eyes of the Flying World, and Nome is our neighbor and our pal. What you goin' to do? The answer is go."

  Before calling it a night, Thompson sent word of the plane's condition to Sutherland and asked him to get official permission for Darling to fly. Then in a telegram to Nome he proposed that the town "be of good cheer...the aviators are all gone at present...but if Washington will release Detective Darling now here on official business...[he] is 'rarin to go' to Nome's help. Have wired Washington accordingly. Nome can depend on Fairbanks to bring help or somebody will die trying."

  More than 3,000 miles away in Washington, D.C., Dan Sutherland went to work. A supporter of home rule for Alaska and an advocate for breaking the West Coast's grip on the territory's lucrative fishing, shipping, mining, and lumber industries, Sutherland was a scrapper. He had recently startled Washington by appearing in the center of the business district in his suspenders, wearing neither coat nor vest. "I am allowing the dust of Washington to blow off me," he told a reporter, "so that I will be in finer trim to go after the gentlemen who are looting Alaska of its salmon and timber, and get quicker results when Congress convenes again." His persistence on Capitol Hill had earned him the nickname "Fighting Dan" back home.