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

by Gay Salisbury

Although diphtheria is now rare in the United States, it has made a comeback in other parts of the world, particularly where war and corruption have devastated the health infrastructure. In the past ten years, Russia and several former Soviet states have fought off outbreaks of the disease.

  The pharmaceutical firm H. K. Mulford gave out twenty gold medals, one for each driver on the first relay. The Alaskan government also gave each of them $25 as well as a citation stamped with the territorial gold seal.

  Public response was overwhelming. The Seattle Times ran a public subscription fund to raise money for the drivers and the dogs, and the proceeds were divided equally among them. Dozens of letters and poems addressed to "Balto" began to pour into Nome's post office. Local schoolchildren did their best to reply to most of them; the Nome Nugget received more poems than it could print and issued an apology. A churchman in Pasadena, California, sent in a poem entitled "Balto, Hero of the Snows," and several writers in Atlanta sent in their own rhyming tributes to the dog. Paeans were received as well by state and federal officials, including a demand by one New Jersey resident that Nome be renamed Balto "in honor of Gunnar Kaasen's famous lead dog."

  The media realized that there was even more money to be made from the courage of others. The wire photo service Pacific Atlantic arranged for a driver to deliver the first photographs and newsreel footage of the relay. They were, in fact, reenactments of Kaasen's arrival in Nome.

  A veteran musher named John Hegness raced across Alaska and then south to the ice-free ports, where he caught a steamship and headed for Seattle. Three hundred miles north of Seattle, a seaplane and small boat were waiting for him. Hegness, who had sealed the film in a can, threw it overboard for the crew of the small boat to retrieve from the waters and transport to the seaplane. The pictures were flown to Seattle and rushed by car to the offices of the Seattle Times. Hegness remained on board the ship and arrived several hours later in time to see the first pictures of the serum run splashed across a fall-page extra of the evening edition of the Seattle Times, five weeks after leaving Nome.

  Within days of the run, offers also began to pour in from the movies, as well as from showmen and publicists of every kind. Because Kaasen was the first driver to reach Nome, the newspapers rushed to describe his and Balto's experience on the trail. Kaasen and his team became instant celebrities, and by late February 1925, they had a movie deal and a tour lined up and were on their way to the states. With Balto and the other dogs, Kaasen and his wife, Anna, traveled south to Seward, where they boarded the steamship Alameda for Seattle. It was the first time in twenty-one years that the quiet musher had left Nome, and by the time the ship reached Seattle, a hero's welcome awaited him. The Associated Press got a photo of Gunnar, Anna, and Balto on deck, and a crowd encircled them. Kaasen then greeted his old friend from Nome, Ralph Lomen, who was in Seattle at the time, and told him: "I was praying you'd be here to protect me." Moments later, he was lost in the crowd. "We've been here only 10 minutes and I've lost my husband already," Anna Kaasen complained. "I could start back to Nome right now and not feel so badly about it."

  Weeks later, Kaasen and the dogs began their brief movie career. Hollywood producer Sol Lesser, who would later make Rin Tin Tin and Tarzan pictures, shot the dog and driver for a thirty-minute film called Balto's Race to Nome. Lesser wasted no time hiring Kaasen and his team to promote the movie, and soon they were touring venues on the West Coast. In Los Angeles, Mary Pickford sat with Balto on the steps of City Hall as the mayor placed a wreath of flowers around the dog's neck.

  While Kaasen and the dogs were touring the West Coast, the parks commissioner of New York City announced that a statue of Balto would be erected in Central Park. It was a rare honor, normally accorded only to such luminaries as Christopher Columbus, William Shakespeare, and Alexander Hamilton. Donations poured in to build the statue and the well-known sculptor Frederick Roth began to design it. Kaasen finished up his Hollywood commitments and, under the auspices of another promoter, went on a nine-month-long vaudeville circuit of the states. (A pay dispute between Kaasen and Lesser had led to the sale of the team to the new promoter.) The tour ended in New York, where on December 16, Kaasen, dressed in a squirrel-fur parka and timber wolf-fur pants, attended the unveiling of the statue. Balto stood quietly by his side, displaying no interest in the ceremonies until two northern sled dogs brought back from the Yukon Territory broke from the crowd and tried to join them. Kaasen managed to prevent the dogs from getting into a fight.

  After the unveiling, Kaasen reluctantly left the dogs behind with the promoter who had bought the team and traveled back to Alaska through Canada. He arrived in Nenana by train and immediately returned to his job hauling supplies. Earl Modini, the proprietor of the Independent Meat Market store in Nome, had ordered seventy-five cases of yeast, and Kaasen borrowed a dog team and transported them to Nome.

  It had been almost a year since Kaasen had left Nome, and when he returned in February 1926 he found his small town transformed. While he was away, a bitter feud had developed over the attention he had received from the press. Some Nome residents were angry and jealous of the movie offers and accused Kaasen of intentionally bypassing the last driver, Ed Rohn. They said he was trying to capture for himself the glory that would fall on whichever musher delivered the serum to Welch's door. Kaasen's supporters defended him, arguing that he had been blinded by the ferocity of the blizzard and had missed the roadhouse at Solomon. Therefore, they argued, he had never received the message to halt the relay.

  The facts may never be known. Most of the relay drivers and residents or other witnesses to the history of the run died without giving a full account. Kaasen, who was a man of few words, rarely spoke of it. The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner maintained that Kaasen was reluctant to go on tour and that Mayor Maynard had persuaded him.

  "He would rather make his hard mush over again, day after day, than appear on the stage where every eye in the house would be staring at him," wrote William Thompson.

  Even on tour, Kaasen seldom spoke to the press. One polite newspaper account in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer described him as having "the shrinking modesty so generally accepted as becoming of a man of strong deeds...On his rugged face is written an expression of pained patience which seems to say: 'Ho hum! This business of being a film star isn't all it's cracked up to be.' "

  The feud between the two camps simmered for years and was revived after Kaasen retired from mining and moved to Everett, Washington, in 1952. Six years later, a reporter again raised the question that Kaasen might have bypassed Solomon roadhouse on purpose.

  "Nonsense," Kaasen snapped. "I was blind."

  The interview was over.

  At first, Leonhard Seppala chose to stay out of the fray. In the immediate aftermath of the run, he focused on finding Togo and another teammate. The dogs had picked up the scent of reindeer on their return to Nome and had broken free of their harnesses. For days, Seppala worried that Togo had been mistaken for a wolf and shot by a reindeer herder, or that he had gotten his foot caught in a fox trap, a fairly common fate of sled dogs.

  Eventually, the two dogs wandered back to the kennel at Little Creek and were reunited with their worried owner.

  Seppala praised Kaasen for making the tough trek to Nome, but he was less generous when Togo's contribution failed to be as celebrated as Balto's. He was outraged that several newspapers had incorrectly attributed Togo's trail achievements to Balto, and devastated when he learned that New York was about to put up a bronze effigy of the wrong dog.

  Seppala had once said that "in Alaska, our dogs mean considerably more to us than those 'outside' can appreciate, and a slight to them is as serious a matter to their drivers as if a human being's achievements were overlooked." The lack of recognition afforded Togo was a serious and heart-wrenching blow to him.

  "It was almost more than I could bear when the 'newspaper' dog Balto received a statue for his 'glorious achievements,'" Seppala wrote in his memoirs.

/>   For the next several years, Seppala would go out of his way to remind the public that he and Togo had traveled farther than any of the other teams, and that their section of the route had been by far the most dangerous. Seppala even claimed it was Fox, not Balto, who had led Kaasen's team. 2

  2. After the run, reports slowly came out in the press that suggested Balto may not have been the sole leader of Kaasen's team. Popular dog biographer Albert Payson Terhune, who met Kaasen and Balto during their U.S. tour, told the McKnaught Syndicate that according to these reports the initial leader of Kaasen's team had been felled by the brutal cold. Another lead dog was chosen, but he too was beaten by the storm. "Then Balto was put in the lead. He did not wear out and he did not quit. Not only did he keep the rest of his team up to their work, but he found and kept the trail." It is possible that Kaasen had to switch dogs around on the team. Mushers will attest that even good lead dogs often refuse to run into a gale.

  Seppala had designated Fox as the leader of the second string and had accused reporters of failing to give the dog his due. Fox was a common name in Alaska, he explained. It would never have stood out in a headline, whereas Balto's name was a grabber.

  Seppala was always offended by the statue of the "wrong dog," but in his memoirs he chose to backtrack from the graver accusations about Kaasen and Balto:

  I hope I shall never be the man to take away credit from any dog or driver who participated in that run. We all did our best. But when the country was roused to enthusiasm over the serum run driver, I resented the statue to Balto, for if any dog deserved special mention it was Togo...At the time I left [for the run] I never dreamed that anyone could consider these dogs [the second string] fit to drive even in a short relay...As to the leader, it was up to the driver who happened to be selected to choose any dog he liked, and he chose Balto.

  Regardless of any possible justification, it was not in Seppala's nature to show disrespect for an Alaskan sled dog.

  By fall 1926, Seppala had made his own plans to take his Siberian dogs on tour with the ultimate goal of racing in the Northeast. In October, he left Nome with Togo and forty-two other dogs on one of the last steamships sailing before the winter set in. At last Togo would receive the national recognition he deserved. Seppala and his Siberians made an astonishing number of promotional appearances. The tour took him from Seattle to California and across the midwestern states to the Northeast, a logistical feat that required the patience of a saint as well as enormous skill. It would have been hard to imagine anyone else in charge. He posed for photographs with Togo and the whole team in department stores and he appeared in a national ad campaign for Lucky Strike cigarettes. To the delight of his child fans and their parents, he would demonstrate what it was like to live in the Arctic and he lectured on Siberian dogs.

  In town after town, Seppala paraded the whole team down Main Street. According to one report, he visited fifty midwestern towns in a whirlwind three-day jaunt. There was something larger than life about the diminutive Seppala. Wherever he went, he drew crowds so huge that the police often had to be brought in to maintain control. In Kansas City, some of the dogs were hurt when the crowd became too big, and during an event at a Detroit auditorium, spectators surged forward to see him in his fur parka and sealskin pants and almost trampled him. In one town, Seppala and his Siberians drew a larger crowd than President Coolidge had. Oddly, this man who had spent so much of his life in the company of dogs turned out to be a natural-born public speaker, combining playfulness with wry humor. He told one audience that his secret for staying in shape at the late age of fifty was that he neither smoked nor drank. Then, as he was turning somersaults and handsprings, two cigars fell out of his pocket. The crowd roared.

  "They probably considered it all part of the show," a friend had said.

  New York City was the last stop on the tour. With Togo at the lead, Seppala drove the serum run team to the top of the steps of City Hall, then up Fifth Avenue, and finally on a circuit through Central Park. There was a series of appearances at Madison Square Garden, where former Nome resident and current Garden manager Tex Rickard had arranged a ten-day exhibition. Before thousands of spectators, Seppala drove the team around the ice hockey rink, and the dogs were so excited they sped around the turns at top speed, crashing into the walls. During halftime at one game, the explorer Roald Amundsen went out on the ice to give a speech honoring Togo, and presented the animal with a gold medal. There was thunderous applause from the twenty thousand spectators. It was a fitting end to the tour, and when it was over Seppala was free to return to his great love, racing.

  At the invitation of Arthur Walden of the Chinook Kennels in Wonalancet, New Hampshire, Seppala headed up to New England in January 1927 to participate in the burgeoning race circuit. Walden had been a dog freighter during the Klondike and Alaskan gold rushes and had returned to New Hampshire to become an enthusiastic promoter of sled dogs. He was instrumental in organizing the first race in New England in 1921 and the New England Sled Dog Club in 1924, and he was curious to know how his own line of dogs, the chi-nook, would stand up to Seppala's little Siberians. Walden's chinooks were renowned in the Northeast. They were flop-eared, tawny dogs with a mixed ancestry that included Canadian sled dog, St. Bernard, Belgian sheepdog, and German shepherd.

  They appeared unbeatable until Seppala arrived.

  Seppala and his Siberians blew the competition away. In his first race in Poland Springs, Maine, in January, Seppala beat out his host and the other competitors by more than seven minutes. The crowds were amazed at the appearance of this new team and the performance of the small dogs. The win was even more remarkable for the fact that his dogs were hardly conditioned from their tour of the United States, and Seppala had stopped mid-race to help untangle a competitor's dog team. The competitor was a Poland Spring socialite named Elizabeth Ricker, whose family owned the Poland Spring Resort and were sponsoring the race. Ricker was so impressed with Seppala's dogs that she not only replaced her dog team with a team of Seppala's Siberians but bought most of the remaining Siberians Seppala had brought with him from Alaska. Then, with Seppala as co-manager, Ricker opened up a kennel at the resort, and the two began to breed and sell the Siberians.

  Seppala's participation in subsequent races led to a surge in the popularity of the sport in New England as well as to an increased interest in Siberian Huskies. In 1930, the American Kennel Club officially recognized the Siberian Husky as a breed.

  (A large majority of registered huskies in the United States can boast of having Togo or one of his serum run teammates in their pedigree. Seppala had bolstered the original stock with more imports from Siberia. The last three ever to be imported from Siberia to the kennel came in 1930.)

  For the next few years, after opening the kennel with Ricker, Seppala divided his time between Alaska and Maine. In March 1927, he made his first trip back to Alaska after his tour of the states. Togo had aged considerably since the serum run, and his vigor was now less pronounced. Seppala thought the trip back would be too much for the dog, so he decided to leave him behind with Ricker.

  The serum run had been Togo's last long-distance race, one in which "he had worked his hardest and his best," and the dog was put into retirement to live out his final years. He spent most of his time by the fire in the living room of Ricker's home. "It was a sad parting on a cold gray March morning when Togo raised a small paw to my knee as if questioning why he was not going along with me," Seppala remembered.

  It was probably for the best: Togo needed the rest. He was partially blind and the pain in his joints was worsening. On December 5, 1929, Seppala finally found the courage to put Togo to sleep. He was sixteen years old.

  "Every once in a while a dog breaks through the daily routine of feeding and barking and tugging at a leash, and for some deed of super-canine heroism wins the adoring regard of every one who hears of him," The New York Times Magazine wrote in a eulogy. "...His was the kind of life that catches men by the throat and sets
them to hero worshipping."

  Years after Togo's death, Seppala kept the dog's spirit alive. One reporter, writing about Seppala many years later, said that "in the depths of his keen gray eyes—lives a dog who will never leave."

  "While my trail has been rough at times," Seppala wrote in his journal when he was eighty-one, "the end of the course seems pretty smooth, with downhill going and a warm roadhouse in sight. And when I come to the end of the trail, I feel that along with my many friends, Togo will be waiting and I know that everything will be all right."

  Togo's body was placed on exhibit at the Yale Peabody Museum in New Haven, Connecticut, where it remained for decades. Finally, it was returned to Alaska. It can still be seen in a glass case at the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race Museum outside Anchorage.

  While Togo lived out his well-deserved retirement in Maine, Balto and his teammates were on the other side of the country struggling to survive in Southern California. After their circuit of vaudeville acts in the states, the dogs had ended up in a sideshow in Los Angeles. For ten cents a ticket, a customer could walk into a stuffy backroom and see the animals. They sat there for several months, neglected and abused. Had it not been for George Kimble, a businessman from Cleveland who recognized them, Balto and the others would likely have succumbed to the atrocious conditions. Kimble struck a deal with the owner and agreed to buy the entire team for $2,000. He had two weeks to come up with the money.

  He returned to Cleveland and began a campaign through the Cleveland Plain Dealer to rescue the dogs. The response was overwhelming. Children donated milk money at school and waitresses and factory hands passed around the collection plate at work. Shops, hotels, and a local kennel club chipped in generously, and by the tenth day of the drive Kimble had his cash.

  On March 19, 1927, Balto and six other teammates—Fox, Sye, Billy, Tillie, Moctoc, and Alaska Slim—were given a hero's welcome as they paraded through downtown Cleveland. (The six other serum run teammates had already died or been sold.) In harness again, they pulled a sled rigged with wheels and driven by a former gold stampeder named Marye Berne. Thousands lined the streets, a band played, and the dogs marched to their new home at the Brookside Zoo (now the Metroparks Zoo). On their first day there, nearly fifteen thousand people came to see them.