The health official congratulated Welch on his handling of the epidemic and praised "the very commendable way in which you let the newspaper men do the talking and held the even tenor of your way. It has been a source of much gratification to the Public Health Service to have had such an able representative as yourself at one of our farthermost outposts."
Dr. Welch's last trip to Nome appears to have been in the summer of 1933, when he filled in once more for the town physician.
Lula's memoirs drop some hints about her husband's mood swings that suggest possible manic depression or alcoholism. After a long period of ill health, Dr. Welch died on December 14, 1948, at the age of seventy. The cause of death, according to his death certificate, was a morphine overdose, self-administered.
By 1925, Nome had already lost much of the splendor of its gold rush years, and nature would make matters worse. A series of floods and storms knocked down many of the buildings on Front Street, and a 1934 fire destroyed much of the town. The Maynard Columbus Hospital survived the conflagration but burned to the ground during a blizzard in 1948, although the nurses' quarters remain intact to this day.
"Nome is on a slow retreat," said one resident, Edward Sheriff Curtis, in 1927. "We know each year will be a little worse than the one before."
Curtis's words captured the sentiment of the time. For a while, some residents considered relocating the town up Anvil Creek to safer ground, or seventy-three miles northwest to Teller, an abandoned reindeer station with a natural harbor. But despite what it has been forced to endure, Nome has survived. After every natural disaster, its residents chose to stay and rebuild. One resident has called it the town "that would not die."
In 1974, a storm nearly demolished Nome once again. It inflicted more than $30 million in property damage and was considered the worst in the town's history. A fortified sea wall, engineered by the U.S. Army, now helps to control the storm surge waves, but nothing can temper the blizzards or hold back the ice. Each year, winter descends on Nome in much the same fashion as it did in 1925.
Today, some 3,500 people live in Nome and the options for reaching the town are almost as few as they were in the 1920s. There are no roads or railroad lines. There are some passenger ships in summer; in winter, flights are frequent but are often grounded by bad weather. Most of those who arrive by dogsled are Iditarod racers.
With the start of the new millennium, however, Nome has once again acquired a certain cachet, albeit of a special kind. Some twenty thousand people visit the town every summer to see the vestiges of one of America's last gold stampedes.
Nome is a good show: there are still old dredges and buckets rusting on the beach alongside railroad ties pushed up out of the tundra. Dreamers still come to Nome to try their luck, camping out on the beach in tents. They bring modern contraptions to mine for gold, and they'll occasionally head up the creek with a pan and shovel.
Others simply come to take in the view and to experience life at the edge of the Bering Sea.
APPENDIX B: THE 1925 SERUM RUN PARTICIPANTS
The following is the generally accepted order of the mushers in the first serum run, as well as the mileage they covered.
1. Leonard Seppala drove 170 miles from Nome to Shaktoolik to meet the serum for a total of 261 miles in the first serum run, the longest distance in the whole run. On one day he covered 84 miles.
Source Notes
To reconstruct the events of January 1925, we relied heavily on government documents, interviews, oral histories, and diaries. Wherever there were gaps in the record, we turned to secondary sources for guidance. Particularly helpful were Kenneth A. Ungermann's The Race to Nome, which contained interviews with many of the drivers; Leonhard Seppala's biography, Seppala: Alaskan Dog Driver, by Elizabeth M. Ricker; and a series of articles Seppala wrote with Raymond Thompson in .... A number of excellent trail descriptions by the late Don Bowers were also of great help. Memories are often fallible, and we sometimes found that our subjects remembered differing versions of the same event. Where accounts differed, we used our best judgment and tried to make informed decisions about what happened that fateful winter.
Prologue: Icebound
4 Welch's life in Alaska: Lula Welch as told to Marion Rankin Kennedy, "Northland Doctor's Wife," parts I-II, Alaska Sportsman (May 1965-May 1966), provides extensive detail about Curtis and Lula Welch's life in Alaska; "Nome Doctor Hero New Haven Boy," Hartford Courant, February 7, 1925, includes letters Welch sent to his sister as well as interviews with his sister that open a window into Welch's personality and feelings toward Alaska. See also Curtis Welch, "An Unfinished Memoir of Pioneer Days," 1939, June Metcalfe Collection, Rasmuson Library (hereafter cited as Rasmuson), University of Alaska, Fairbanks.
4 an area as big as England, France, Italy: Jim DuFresne, Alaska: A Lonely Planet Travel Survival Kit (Victoria, Australia: Lonely Planet Publications, 1997), 11.
4 one would have to spend a lifetime: Merle Colby, A Guide to Alaska, Last American Frontier (New York: Macmillan, 1945), vii.
5 Front Street was never busier: Frank Dufresne, My Way Was North: An Alaskan Autobiography (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1966), portrays the frantic pace in Nome in the last days of fall, while letters from former Nome residents provide colorful detail of a town hunkering down for winter. Letters we received from Jean Summers-Wolf throughout 2001 were particularly helpful, as were interviews with the Walsh family.
7 "an ocean of slush": Dufresne, My Way, 27 .
7 "It seemed to me that half": Ibid.
7 "tips of small torches": Sally Carrighar, Moonlight at Midday (New York: Knopf, 1958), 70. Carrighar wrote in vivid detail about the natural beauty of Northwest Alaska.
8 called it ivu: Barry Lopez, Arctic Dreams (New York: Bantam Books, 1987), 176.
8 a "great listening": Carrighar, Moonlight, 71.
8 "the breath out you": Barrett Willoughby, "The Challenge of the Sweepstakes Trail," American Magazine (1926), James Wickersham Collection, Rasmuson.
8 "as if an unseen hand": John Wallace, "The People of Nome Were Scandalized," Alaska Sportsman (December 1939).
9 not seen a single confirmed case: Curtis Welch to U.S. Surgeon General Hugh Cumming, February 16, 1925, Report, National Archives, Record Group (RG) 90, U.S. Public Health Service, General Correspondence (hereafter cited as Welch Report). The report is Welch's official account of his actions during the epidemic.
9 "Many cases have come under": Welch Report.
Chapter One: Gold, Men, and Dogs
The chapter title comes from Alexander Allan's Gold, Men and Dogs (New York & London: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1931). Allan wrote extensively about his life as a dog driver in the far north, including the training, feeding, breeding, and racing of his sled dogs.
12 "a placer from a potato patch": Quoted in Terrence Cole's history of Nome, Nome: City of the Golden Beaches (Anchorage: Alaska Geographic Society, 1984), 23.
13 "You never saw a more": Local historian Carrie McLain, recalled in her history, Gold Rush Nome (Portland, OR: Graphic Arts Center, 1969).
15 "These men are mad": Loyal Lincoln Wirt, Alaskan Adventures (New York & London: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1937), 13. Considering Governor Brady was a former missionary, as was Loyal Lincoln Wirt, there is little doubt they were friends. But because his book was published thirty years after the fact, we doubt the exact conversation took place. Newspaper accounts from that time corroborate most of the events described in his book.
16 "It's all a lie!": Wirt, Alaskan Adventures, 21.
16 "It seemed as if a great albatross": Ibid., 19
17 Gold dust was used as money: Terrence Cole, Banking on Alaska: The Story of the National Bank of Alaska, 2 vols. (Anchorage: National Bank of Alaska, 2000), 1:15.
18 "To those who contemplate": L. H. French, Nome Nugget: Some of the Experiences of a Party of Gold Seekers in Northwestern Alaska in 1900 (Anchorage: Alaska Northwest Publishing Co., 1883).
19 the U.S. Army Signal Corps:
David Marshall, "The Building of Alaska's Communication System," in Max L. Marshall, ed., The Story of the U.S. Army Signal Corps (New York: Franklin Watts, 1965).
20 "if you didn't own a dog team": Former deputy U.S. Marshal Hansen as told to the Edingtons, Tundra, Romance and Adventure on Alaskan Trails (New York & London: Century Company, 1930; hereafter cited as Hansen, Tundra), 69.
20 "It was said at the time": Lorna Coppinger, The World of Sled Dogs (New York: Howell Book House, 1977), 42.
21 "gentle anything on four legs": Barrett Willoughby, Gentlemen Unafraid (New York & London: G. P. Putnams Sons, 1928), 142.
22 "Is Alaska a dog country": Jack Hines, "This Aims to Be Dog Country," Everybody's Magazine (n.d.), Wickersham Collection, Rasmuson.
22 sweepstakes trail: Esther Birdsall Darling, The Great Dog Races of Nome, Official Souvenir History (Nome: 1916); also Allan, Gold. Darling often sponsored Allan in the sweepstakes.
23 "GONE TO THE DOGS": Willoughby, Gentlemen Unafraid, 96. Willoughby (along with Darling, Allan, and a number of other residents in Nome) described the carnival atmosphere in Nome during the sweepstakes.
24 "more like dealing on the stock exchange": Ibid.
25 his "K9 Corps": Coppinger, The World of Sled Dogs, 68. Scotty Allan also recalled in his biography the details of recruiting sled dogs to serve the French army during World War I.
26 "It was enough to make one forget": Allan, Gold, 269.
26 Since about 60 percent of Alaskan society: Cole, Banking on Alaska, 84-
26 Nome breakdown of population: Kenneth A. Ungermann breaks down the population in Nome for 1925 between whites and Eskimos in The Race to Nome (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), which has since been accepted. Newspapers at the time refer only to a population of "more than a thousand."
27 "places seemed to straighten up": Dufresne, My Way, 13.
27 huge, electric-powered dredges: Doug Beckstead, What Is a Dredge, April 9, 2001, www.nps.gov/yuch/Expanded/mining_history/coal_creek /what_is_a_dredge.htm (January 2002). Beckstead, a historian, wrote about the types of dredges used in Alaska and the Yukon Territory.
27 "like last year's bird nest": Summers-Wolf correspondence.
28 "It was so big and bright": Lula Welch, "Northland Doctor's Wife." 28 "If there happened to be": Curtis Welch, "An Unfinished Memoir," 5.
28 "a hall as run-down as its old movies": Dufresne, My Way, 30.
29 The houses were built about two-thirds: John Poling, A History of the Nome, Alaska Public Schools: 1899 to 1958; From the Gold Rush to Statehood, master's thesis, University of Alaska, 1970. Poling was a former resident of Nome. His thesis describes the social life in Nome as well as the integration of the Eskimos into the community,
29 Walsh owned the only two cows: Drawn from interviews with former Nome resident Joe Walsh in 2001 while he was a resident at the Pioneer Home in Fairbanks, Alaska. Sadly, Joe Walsh has since passed away.
Chapter Two: Outbreak
33 Welch's medical routine: Lula Welch, "Northland Doctor's Wife"; Curtis Welch, "An Unfinished Memoir."
33 Margaret Solvey Eide: Welch Report. Welch does not name Eide in his report, but the details of her illness correspond with reports in the Nome Nugget and her death certificate, filled out by Welch the day after her death.
34 "a-sparkle with tinsel": Recollections of Christmas in Nome are drawn from Jim Walsh, one of the ten children of the pioneer Walsh family whose history paralleled Nome's.
35 "the whole town was alive": The tradition of Community Christmas was inaugurated in Nome in the mid-1920s and recalled in colorful detail by a Nome historian and early resident, Carrie McLain, in a Christmas edition of the Nome Nugget (December 24, 1966).
36 "Death from tonsillitis is rare": Welch Report.
36 deaths of unnamed Natives: Nome's Centennial Cemetery Project under Cussy Kauer's direction aided us in reconstructing the onset of the epidemic from the death certificates. Databases of deaths in Nome by date and victim, as well as Kaver's burial records and restoration of grave markers in Nome's cemeteries, all helped to fill out the sequence of events missing from newspaper accounts and Welch's medical report, though the records are incomplete and in some cases contradictory.
36 Billy Barnett's symptoms and treatment: Welch Report. Welch does not name Barnett, but the length of the boy's stay in hospital and his symptoms correspond closely with reports in the Nome Nugget.
36 "anxious, struggling, pitiful expression": H. K. Mulford Co., The Present Status of Diphtheria Antitoxic Serum (Philadelphia & Chicago: H. K. Mulford, 1897 or 1898), 17. The book reprints the writings of several doctors. This quote is from Lester Keller, M.D., writing in Medical World (November 1896), Merck Archives, Merck & Co.
37 "The most distressing": Evelynn Maxine Hammonds, "The Search for Perfect Control: A Social History of Diphtheria, 1880-1930," Harvard University, 1993, 24. Hammonds quotes from the work of Dr. Victor C. Vaughan, Epidemiology and Public Health, (St. Louis: C. V. Mosby Co., 1922), 3.
37 "I didn't feel justified": Welch Report.
37 might send the community: Welch Report.
39 "In several cases": Mulford Co., The Present Status of Diphtheria, 17. Lester Keller, M.D. 39 "I hardly feel competent": Welch to Cumming, June 18, 1925, National Archives.
39 fears that the disease would destroy the colonies: Ernest Caulfield, M.D., "A True History of the Terrible Epidemic Vulgarly Called the Throat Distemper which occurred in His Majesty's New England Colonies between the years 1735-1740," Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine (1935), 2.
40 "the woeful effects of Original Sin": Ibid., 22.
40 "It frequently begins": W. Barry Wood, Jr., Miasmas and Molecules (New York & London: Columbia University Press, 1961), 2.
40 "All that I have seen": Ibid., 4.
41 "You have done all the good": Allan Chase, Magic Shots (New York: William Morrow, 1982), 168.
42 Welch also realized that the disease could move: Welch sent several telegrams to Washington expressing his concern that the epidemic could spread beyond Nome.
42 "The Natives showed absolutely": Governor Riggs in his annual report to the Secretary of the Interior, Reports of the Department of the Interior, vol. 2 (1919), National Archives, Ete 348.
43 Welch was shaken from his troubled sleep: Welch Report, February 16, 1925.
43 the "strong, elemental" nature: Hartford Courant, February 7, 1925.
43 "one mass of fetid, stinking": Welch Report, February 16.
44 regain his professional composure: Lula Welch, "Northland Doctor's Wife."
Chapter Three: Quarantine
47 comfortable office and the council meeting: Phoebe West, "I Remember Nome," Alaska Sportsman (April 1962); "Nomeites Concerned," Nome Nugget, January 24, 1925; Welch Report; Ungermann, Race to Nome, 17-21.
48 Bessie Stanley's treatment: Welch Report.
49 "It was impossible to get anyone": Written in a letter dated February 9, 1919, immediately after influenza tore through Nome. Author unknown (Carrie McLain Memorial Museum, Nome).
49 "Natives dying every few minutes": From the flurry of telegrams sent from Mayor Lomen to Governor Riggs, Department of the Interior officials, and Bureau of Education members responsible for the welfare of Natives in Nome. "Not a single Eskimo escaped influenza infection"..."Eskimos dying like rats"..."Render all relief possible," were among the urgent telegrams found in the Records of the Department of the Interior (Governor's Correspondence, National Archives, RG 348).
50 "Were it within your power": In a letter Father Lafortune wrote to his sister on December 8, 1918, quoted in Father Louis Renner's biography of the brave missionary who devoted more than sixty years to the Eskimos of Seward Peninsula, Pioneer Missionary. Louis Renner, S.J., Pioneer Missionary to the Bering Strait Eskimos: Bellarmine Lafortune, S.J. (Portland, OR: Binford & Mort, 1979).
5o "mowed down like grass": Entry in Father Lafortune's House Diary written at the end of 1918, quoted in Renner's biography.
; 51 Welch suggested that every school: Welch Report; Nome Nugget, January 24, 1925. 51 one was to be coded for all points in Alaska: Ungermann, Race to Nome, 20.
51 "An epidemic of diphtheria": Welch bulletin to Cumming, January 22, 1925, National Archives.
52 Walshes...Jean Summers-Wolf remembered: Summers-Wolf correspondence; authors' interview with Joe Walsh.
52 "An epidemic of diphtheria": "Nomeites Concerned," Nome Nugget, January 24, 1925.
52 Dora and Mary Stanley: Welch Report; Daily Medical Reports, Carrie McLain Memorial Museum archives (hereafter cited as Medical Reports).
53 Rynning family: Medical Reports.
53 "My nurses are the only consultants": Welch Report.
54 "we had plenty of doctors and hospitals": Charlotte Off en, "Angel of the Yukon," True West (March-April 1974).
54 Morgan's visits to Sandspit and ensuing dialogue: Ibid. Morgan was assigned to Nome to take over duties from Bertha Seville, who was an active Registered Nurse in Nome since 1917 until 1925.
The Cruelest Miles: the Heroic Story of Dogs and Men in a Race Against an Epidemic Page 28