History Book: Alaska’s race for survival

JENNY ROUGH, HOST: Today is Monday, February 24th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Jenny Rough.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Time now for the WORLD History Book.

Last month was the 100th anniversary of the Great Serum Run in Alaska.

It was a race against time to transport the antidote to a deadly disease from one side of the state to the other before an outbreak could wipe out an entire community.

WORLD’s Mary Muncy has the story.

MARY MUNCY: In January 1925, children in Nome, Alaska begin complaining of sore throats and a nasty cough:

SOUND: [CHILDREN COUGHING]

Sound from The Great Alaskan Race movie released in 2019.

At first, the town doctor thinks it’s just a normal cold going around. But soon:

NURSE: What killed that little girl?

DOCTOR: She died of Diptheria.

A bacterial infection that creates a grey mucus that clogs a person’s airways. It’s highly contagious… and kills about 30 percent of infected children.

NURSE: But don’t we have the antitoxin?

DOCTOR: Yes we do, but it’s expired.

And not just by a few days. It’s about five years old the doctor doesn’t know if administering it will cause an adverse reaction, and even if it does work, he doesn’t have enough for all the sick.

DOCTOR: We need help.

The doctor telegraphs health officials in D.C., shuts down the town, and waits.

Former Nome resident, Jean Summers-Wolf, told the BBC that big red cards were posted on quarantined people’s front doors.

SUMMERS-WOLF: We would hold our breath and walk real fast or run past that house.

About five days after the first diphtheria diagnosis, government officials find a small supply of the antidote at a hospital in Anchorage.

The problem? It’s over 1,000 miles away in the dead of winter, and if the serum freezes, it may no longer work. Historian Stephen Haycox:

HAYCOX: The challenge was can we get the serum over to Nome in time?

In 1925 there aren’t any roads or trains to the town. Ships only come to Nome in the summer, and aviation is in its infancy.

The only way to get goods to and from Nome between October and June is by dog sled.

HAYCOX: Transportation by dog team is reliable. But how long is it going to take?

Usually about 30 days, at least for a mail run. Normally, a train brings the mail north from Anchorage to Nenana, then a dog team takes it the rest of the way.

TOWNSPERSON: One musher could never make it there and back. It’s 700 miles.

MAYOR: Not one musher, a relay.

There are cabins about every 30 miles along the route from Nenana to Nome where the mail carriers usually stop and rest.

MAYOR: We station men at every roadhouse from here to Nenana.

The men agree to the plan and two days after officials find the serum in Anchorage, it arrives in Nenana. Musher “Wild Bill” Shannon meets the train, straps the serum to his dog sled, and takes off into negative 54-degree temperatures.

Wild Bill travels about 50 miles before stopping at a cabin, warming himself and the serum then passes it off to the next musher. Three of his dogs had died on the way.

As the serum is on its way from Nenana to Nome, Leonhard Seppala, or “Sepp,” takes off from Nome. He is an immigrant from Norway and a well-known sled dog racer. He heads for a town about halfway between Nome and Nenana to retrieve the serum and return: a 600-mile round-trip run.

MILLER When Leonhard Seppola left Nome, he thought he was doing this whole halfway distance and back on his own and he hears this shouting and he sees a man, you know waving his arms.

Historical author Debbie Miller telling the BBC that it is Henry Ivanoff with the serum, the 17th musher in the relay. They are about 150 miles from Nome and it is near blizzard conditions. They had passed each other, but Ivanoff hears Seppola’s bells and yells him down. Ivanoff gives Seppola the bundle and Seppola turns around and heads back towards Nome.

Just a few miles in, he comes to the shore of the Norton Sound. Resident Summers-Wolf.

SUMMERS-WOLF: They were given orders go on land, do not cross Norton Sound because it’s high risk.

And a storm is rolling in, meaning Seppola won’t be able to hear or see if the ice starts cracking. He would have to trust his lead dog Togo to get them to the other side, but he takes off across the ice, anyway.

A few hours later, they make it to the other side and make camp.

MILLER: When they woke up in the morning, all that ice that they had crossed was gone. It had all floated out to sea.

The storm continues getting worse, but Seppola breaks camp and mushes for another 13 hours until he meets Charlie Olsen and hands off the serum.

After about 25 miles, Olsen delivers it to Gunner Kaasen, who is supposed to be the second to last musher in the chain, but when Kaasen arrives at the last stop he doesn’t see lights in the cabin and thinks the other musher isn’t ready to leave. So Kaasan keeps going, and at 5:30 in the morning, he pounds on the doctor’s door, holding the serum.

DOCTOR: Incredible, they’re all intact. Not a single vial broken.

They are frozen, but they still work and are quickly thawed and injected.

DOCTOR: Let’s go to work.

The mushers had turned a 30-day journey into a six-day sprint. But the town isn’t out of the woods, yet. The shipment is enough to slow the spread of diphtheria but more mushers do another run the very next week to bring a second shipment to the town.

Six days after that shipment arrives, the doctor lifts the quarantine about a month after the first diagnosis. The media coverage of the serum run lifts Kaasan and his lead dog Balto to national fame.

We know from historical documents that at least five people died of diphtheria before the antidote arrived, though some historians believe there were likely more since Inuit deaths were usually under-reported, if reported at all.

Today, planes, trains, and automobiles have mostly replaced the sled dog in the Alaskan wilderness, but every year, the state holds a race called the Iditarod Sled Dog Race that follows a similar route as the Serum Run. The ceremonial start to the race begins Saturday. More than 30 mushers and their dogs will compete to see who has the stamina to make the 1,000-mile journey and join people like Seppola and Kaassan in musher history.

SOUND: [CHEERING]

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Mary Muncy.

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