Timesuck with Dan Cummins - Short Suck #33 - The Great Race of Mercy

Episode Date: May 9, 2025

Remember when a bunch of dogs saved hundreds of human’s lives in Alaska a century ago? In January of 1925, diphtheria, a deadly disease, swept through the village Nome, Alaska… killing multiple children. The town was frozen in for the winter. No roads in or out. No ships able to break through the ice in the sea around it. No planes able to fly through a winter so cold, temperatures on the ground would plummet to nearly -90 degrees Fahrenheit. The only hope to deliver life-saving anti-toxins to the area? Alaska's wildly hearty, determined, and heroic sled dogs. For Merch and everything else Bad Magic related, head to: https://www.badmagicproductions.com

Welcome to another edition of Time Sucks Short Sucks. I'm Dan Cummins and today I'll be sharing the story of the great race of Mercy, aka the 1925 serum run to known. Remember when a bunch of dogs saved hundreds of human lives in Alaska a century ago? No? Well, let me refresh your memory. Or let me introduce you to one of the coolest dog stories I've ever heard. In January of 1925, diphtheria, a deadly disease back before the advent of life-saving vaccines, swept through the village of Nome, Alaska, killing multiple children.

During the outbreak, new cases were popping up every day. And Nome, a small, very remote town of only about 1,400 people at the time, a town not and still not connected to the rest of Alaska by road, a town closer to the international border with Russia than to any other Alaskan town of notable size, had literally one physician to fight this outbreak, Dr. Curtis Welch. And Dr. Welch did not have the diphtheria endotoxins he needed to treat and save his patients. He worried that based on fatality rates associated with his disease at the time, a few hundred people would die.

Enough death to virtually destroy the small, remote frozen town. That doctor had placed an order for the antitoxin months earlier, but it didn't make it in time, and now the town's port was closed for the winter due to all the ships sinking icebergs floating around in the Bering Sea. Gnome is located just 2 degrees south of the Arctic Circle and in January, the temperature can drop as low as negative 54 degrees Fahrenheit. That is not counting any wind chill and it gets colder in the areas surrounding Gnome. In the winter months before the advent of modern jet planes,

Gnome and the frozen tundra surrounding it would become completely isolated from the rest of the world outside of a long and rugged path that was falling into disuse back in 1925, a path known as the Iditarod Trail, which connected Nome to the railroad in Nanana, Alaska, 674 miles away. Much too far to walk in the brutally unforgiving winter weather. So how were they going to get that needed medicine? There was no road to have it driven in. It was too cold for planes of the day to fly in or out. It was too frozen for any ships to bring the medicine.

It was too cold even for horses to ride along that trail. But it wasn't too cold for Alaska's incredible sled dogs. Dog lovers rejoice. And let's hear about how man's best friend truly saved man's ass. Words and ideas can change the world. I hated her, but I wanted to love my mother. I have a dream.

I'll plead not guilty right now. Your only chance is to leave with us. Local community leaders, and no, that Dr. Welch is urging, worked with state officials to figure out how the hell they were going to get the needed antitoxin before the whole damn town was sick, dead, or dying. What they decided on was literally the only option they had. They would have a series of dog sled teams travel to hundreds of miles across frozen

tundra and icy wilderness to deliver the life-saving serum. It was a journey that would become known as the Great Race of Mercy. While not always recorded in the history books, dogs have been saving humans' lives by carrying them across frozen lands on treks that would never survive without them for thousands of years.

Humans have been using dogs to pull themselves along on sleds across some of the most remote and unforgiving areas of the earth since at least 6000 BCE. Remnants of sleds and harnesses alongside canine remains found in Siberia were carbon-dated to 7800 to 8000 years ago. And indigenous cultures have been using dog sleds for, presumably, as long as dog sleds have been around, to transport much-needed supplies from place to place in areas where no other

method of transportation would have gotten the job done. Historians believed that long long ago dog sledding spread from Siberia across the Arctic Circle and just below it over several centuries heading east from Russia across the Bering Strait into present-day Alaska, Canada, and Greenland and headed west from Russia into Scandinavia. The practice was largely unknown to the rest of the world until around the 10th century CE when some Arabian merchants who worked along the Silk Road, a network of trade routes connecting Asia, Europe and North Africa, made some of the first written references to dog sledding.

The famous explorer Marco Polo later described dog sledding in his records of his travels across Eurasia in the 13th century. Dog sledding has in all likelihood been carried out in the area around Nome for thousands of years. Indigenous people first settled in the area around 10,000 years ago. No one knows who the original people who lived in this part of the world were or what they called themselves. But the Anupiat, aka Alaskan Inuit people, have lived in this region as an identifiable culture for at least 4,000 to 6,000 years. And for most of that time, if not for all that time, they likely used sled dogs.

Known was not settled by non-Indigenous people until 1898 after three Nordic Americans, known collectively as the three lucky Swedes. Joffit Lindberg, Erik Lindblom, and John Brindiston, discovered some shiny old gold nuggets in Anvil Creek near Rome. Gnome then sprang up soon afterwards as a true gold rush or boom town followed a bunch of gold being found in the easily siftable sandy beaches of Gnome shortly after those Swedes saw those nuggets. And the population rapidly shot up to around 10,000. Within two years over 12,000 people lived in Nome.

Most, almost all, arrived via ship, but some did make the trek overland in the warmer months by wagon using the Iditarod Trail. For some cool trivia from this time, Wyatt Earp of Tombstone fame followed the gold rush all the way up to Nome, and in September of 1899, he and a business partner built the Dexter Saloon,

the city's first two-story wooden building and its largest and most luxurious saloon out of more than 60 saloons. Between 1900 and 1909, the city's population peaked at around an estimated 28,000 people. But then by 1910, the very next year, the big boom was over. Most of the big mines had closed or were closing down, and the population had dwindled all the way to 2,600 people. By 1920 it had dropped further down to just 852. But then new mining methods were able to increase gold production in the area and the population ticked back up quite a bit prior to 1925.

Of the 1925 population of 1,430 people, approximately 455 were Alaska Natives, and 975 were settlers of European descent. And then that population dropped again when a highly contagious and lethal disease came to town. Diphtheria is a very contagious and very serious bacterial infection, primarily affecting the nose and throat that can present similarly to tonsillitis. Signs and symptoms usually begin two to five days after a person becomes infected and can include a thick gray membrane covering the throat and tonsils, a sore throat and hoarseness, swollen glands, aka enlarged lymph nodes in the neck,

difficulty breathing or rapid shallow breathing, nasal discharge, fever and chills, and extreme fatigue. Left untreated, the diphtheria-causing bacteria may also produce a toxin that can damage tissue in the immediate area of infection, usually the nose and throat. At that site, the infection produces a tough gray membrane made up of dead cells, bacteria, and other substances, and that membrane can obstruct breathing. The diphtheria toxin can also spread through the bloodstream and damage other tissues in the body.

For example, it can damage the heart, causing inflammation that can lead to heart failure and sudden death. The toxin can also cause nerve damage. Typical targets are nerves that affect the throat, where poor nerve conduction may cause difficulty swallowing. If the diphtheria toxin damages the nerves that help control the muscles used in breathing, well, you can suffocate. And young kids and people over the age of 40, back when the disease hit gnome, between 10 and 20 percent of those infected would die.

The bacteria spreads through close contact with an infected person or their secretions, such as airborne droplets when somebody sneezes, skin-to-skin contact, or somebody infected touching something that you then touch shortly thereafter. The best prevention for diphtheria is vaccines, which is why cases are currently so rare in the US. But the first vaccine was not developed until 1923, two years before Gnome's outbreak. And it wouldn't become widely available until the early 1940s when it was combined with tetanus and pertussis vaccines creating the DDP vaccine which then became routine for kids to get. I don't know about now but it was routine. Gnome in the winter was a

perfect breeding ground for an outbreak due to the bitter cold. Everyone was gathering inside, sweaty people touching the same sweaty stuff, breathing the same sweaty air at the store, bar, cafe, gold mine, what-have-you, and then heading home to hole up inside with her sweaty-ass families and crowded sweaty little houses. Everyone being trapped inside, plus Gnome's isolation, created a nightmare scenario when cases of diphtheria started popping up and spreading fast. Between November and July, the port on the southern shore of the Seward Peninsula on Alaska's western coast

was icebound and completely inaccessible by steamship. Dr. Curtis Welch had ordered a batch of diphtheria antitoxin months before the ports closed, after he learned that his current batch at the Maynard Columbus Hospital, the only hospital serving gnome in the surrounding area, had expired. But as I previously mentioned, that shipment did not arrive before the port had closed for the winter and then disaster

struck. In December of 1924, a two-year-old Inuit boy from a nearby village became the first person to show symptoms of diphtheria. But Dr. Welch misdiagnosed him with tonsillitis because no one else in his family or his village was showing any symptoms at that time. Tragically, the toddler died the very next morning. And then his mother refused to allow an autopsy so Dr. Welch continued to think that he had died from tonsillitis. And while rare, tonsillitis can be fatal, but it's also not contagious.

It's an inflammation of the tonsils, which are lumps of tissue located at the back of the throat. But the various viruses and bacteria that can cause tonsillitis, most commonly flu or cold viruses, also diphtheria, are contagious. Throughout December of 1924, Dr. Welch noticed an abnormally large number of what seemed to him to be tonsillitis cases. And some might have been. There might have been tonsillitis cases. And some might have been. There might have been tonsillitis brought on by diphtheria. There was another fatality on December 28th, shortly followed by the deaths of two more young Inuit children.

So now four kids in the area have died and all likely died of diphtheria. The first definitive case of diphtheria, such a weird word, D-I-P-H-T, diphtheria, was diagnosed about a month later, January 20th, 1925, in a three-year-old patient by the name of Bill Barnett. Dr. Welch did not administer a diphtheria antitoxin to the boy because the only supply he did have was badly expired. It was almost seven years old, dated back to 1918. And the doctor worried it would just weaken the boy further. Sadly, Billy died anyway the very next day on the 21st. Also on January 21st, seven-year-old Bessie Stanley was diagnosed with late-stage diphtheria. Dr. Welch injected her with 6,000 units of very expired antitoxin serum to try and save her life,

but it wasn't enough, and she died just hours later. So now six young area kids have died. That evening, Dr. Welch contacted George Maynard, the mayor of Nome, and arranged an emergency town council meeting. Welch told the council members he would need at least one million units of the antitoxin, fresh, obviously not expired units, to stop an epidemic. The council immediately declared an emergency quarantine

and appointed nurse Emily Morgan as the head quarantine nurse. But the deaths kept coming. Two more people died on January 24th. Body count is now up to eight. That day, there were 20 more diagnosed cases and 50 additional people considered to be at risk. The local Board of Health met on the 24th at the meeting superintendent superintendent Mark Summers, who also worked for the

Hammond Consolidated Goldfields, proposed sending a relay of two expert dog sled teams to get the antitoxin. One team would start in Nanana and the other in Nome and they would meet in between in the small indigenous village of Nulato. Nulato had about 250 people back then, same as now. The distance between Nome and Nanana, the railroad station there, is 674 miles via the Iditarod Trail. That trip normally took a month with a single dog sled team, which is why a relay was needed in this situation. Board of Health Superintendent Sommers quickly employed a local Norwegian-born dog sled racer named Leonard Sepala. Sepala was considered an

ideal choice for the trip. More on him shortly, quite a bit more. The mayor of Nome proposed flying in the anti-toxin via bush plane. Bush planes were and are used in Alaska to provide to provide flight services to remote undeveloped areas. However, the bush planes of 1925 had open cockpits and water-cooled engines. They were deemed very unreliable for winter flights in especially cold weather. Alaska's available northern Bush planes had also been dismantled for the winter to clean parts and make repairs, and the two pilots who operated these planes for the Fairbanks Airplane Corporation were unavailable. The Board of Health voted unanimously for the dog sled relay.

They also voted for the mayor to keep his stupid mouth shut if he was only capable of suggesting dumbass shit like his idiotic bush plane in January idea. Or at least he should have voted for that. Leonard Sepulup began preparing his 20-dog team. He chose his beloved Siberian Husky, 12-year-old Togo, to lead the team. Siberian Huskies, Alaskan Huskies, and Alaskan Malamutes, the most common breeds of sled dogs.

And Siberian Huskies, like Sepulis dogs, maybe not as big as you would think. Females, typically only between 35 and 50 pounds. Males not a lot bigger, between 44 and 60 pounds. I thought they would be quite a bit heavier. These dogs are literally built for the cold. They have been bred to flourish way up north. They have a thickly furred double coat, which is a coat with two distinct layers, an undercoat and a top coat. Their undercoat, a soft dense layer of shorter hairs that provides insulation, while the top coat, longer coarser layer of guard hairs that help repel water and dirt.

And this special dual coat not only protects these dogs effectively against harsh arctic winters, it also reflects heat in summer. Incredibly, it allows them to survive in temperatures as low as 76 to 80 degrees below zero. Which is fucking insane. 12-year-old Togo, Sepul's lead dog, was only 48 pounds, small for a male, not much of a looker. His coat was a dull gray that left him looking perpetually dirty. He also didn't have the typical temperament of a sled dog.

He's a bit of a wild card. He'd been rowdy, small, sickly, generally disobedient as a puppy, and seen zero potential in him as a sled dog. Sepul actually gave him away to be somebody's pet when he's about six months old. But then just a few weeks later, Togo jumped through the glass of a closed window, ran several miles back to his original master's kennel. And Sepple was impressed.

This dog had spirit and loyalty to the pack he was born into. Two months later, when Togo was eight months old, he proved his worth as a sled dog. I love this. Sepple had been hired by a client to transport him quickly to a newly discovered gold claim, which would be an overnight round trip for the team. And he did this kind of stuff all the time. He was like an Uber driver, but with dogs. Unable to spare extra time dealing with the young Togo's antics, the rambunctious puppy was still raised in hell.

Seppala tethered him inside the kennel with instructions left to not set him free until he and the team were well and gone. But a short while later, Togo broke free of his tether somehow, jumped the kennel fence, getting his paw stuck in the process. A kennel handler noticed him, cut the dog down from the fencing. But before he could just, you know, tie him up again, Togo took off and he was following the team's trail. And then he found the team after the sun went down. He slept unnoticed near the cabin where Seppala was spending the night. The next day, Sepul has spotted him far off in the distance and now understood why his dogs had been so keyed up. Togo continued to make Sepul's trip difficult on the return trip to the kennel, trying

to play with the work dogs and leading them in quote charges against reindeer and pulling him off the trail. Togo was a menace. Seppala eventually felt he had no choice but to put him in a harness to try and control him and then he was surprised when Togo instantly settled down. As the run wore on, Seppala kept moving Togo up the line until at the end of the day he was sharing the lead position with an experienced and much bigger lead dog named Rusky. Togo had logged 75 miles on his first day in a harness which was unheard of for an inexperienced young sled dog, especially a puppy.

Sepulah called him an infant prodigy, later added that I had found a natural-born leader, something I had tried for years to breed. And now that we met the star dog of this suck, let's meet the star sled dog star breeder, the man who would mush his dogs across the tundra and back to help save his neighbors and no. Leonard Sepulah was born in a small town in Norway September 14th 1877. Came from a line of Quen people. Quen people even though it's K-V-E-N I guess the American pronunciation is quen. They are traditional peasant fishermen who speak what some describe as a Finnish dialect. What others consider to be a totally separate language. They're an ethnic group indigenous to the northern parts of Sweden, Norway, Finland,

and parts of Russia. Most today, most for quite a while, have lived in northern Norway. The Arctic cold of Nome, Alaska felt like home sweet home to Sepulah. He was the oldest child, started working on the family farm at a young age. By the age of 12, Seppala was accompanying his father on fishing trips. He did that with his father every fishing season until 1897. And that was when 20-year-old Seppala left home to find work and arrived in the city of Oslo, the capital of Norway, in its largest city. He encountered his childhood friend slash first girlfriend, a woman named Margaret.

They reconnected, decided to get married, but then sadly, Margaret died unexpectedly. Brokenhearted, Seppala returned home to work in his dad's blacksmith shop, which he ran when he wasn't fishing. And then in 1899, Seppala got word of gold being discovered across the world in the Klondike region of Canada's Yukon Territory and nearby Alaska. He also read headlines about those quote three lucky Swedes who had found gold at Anvil Creek near modern-day Nome and those dudes have returned to Sweden with a bunch of gold, a bunch of stories of their

adventures. Seppala befriended one of these men, Jofit Lindbergh, and Lindbergh loaned him money to join him on a return trip to Alaska where Seppala would be employed by his mining company that he had set up there. Seppala and other hopeful Scandinavian gold miners boarded a ship that arrived in Nome June 14, 1900. At the time, as I shared earlier, Nome was a gold boom town, but Seppala soon realized that he wasn't cut out for mining. He would later write, I now began to understand what a huge mistake I had made, working like an animal here instead of working in the Smith in Norway, like in the blacksmith shop.

So he continued working hard, made himself important to the company, and Lindbergh eventually set him out to prospect. Seppler returned to Nome in September, got back to work. Seppler wrote, with the approach of evening I thought of the little shop in Norway and regretted that I had listened, that I had listened to the gold-tongued orators who had persuaded me to come to Alaska. But I had only myself to blame. I wanted adventure and I was getting it. Life in Norway never seemed so sweet as when I toiled away in the dark rainy nights shoveling. In December of 1901, there was word of a gold strike near the Kugarok River.

Lindbergh sent Seppala to check it out, accompanied by a few other men and two dog sled teams. And that was Seppala's first exposure to sled dogs. And he acquired his first two sled dogs on that trip. He fell in love with them. His dogs were mutts, but Seppala thought they were also, quote, splendid animals that pulled loads that would have staggered ordinary dogs. Seppala had previously participated in some ski competitions as a hobby and now this was gonna be his new hobby. It would become his career. Around this time dog sledding was becoming a popular pastime among both European immigrants and

Americans in Alaska. The first all Alaska sweepstakes would be held in 1908. This was to become an annual 408 mile dog sled race from Nome to the little mining camp of Candle and then back and that race lasted until 1917. Sepulet would go on to win the all Alaska sweepstakes. Three consecutive years 1915, 1916, 1917. The three last years of the race. Backing up to 1909, Russian fur trader William Gusak brought 10 Siberian huskies to compete in the race that year. And they were half the size of normal sled dogs.

At the time, most mushers were using either mixed breeds or Alaskan Malamutes. Much bigger dog than Malamute. Males typically clock in between 80 and 100 pounds. Females generally top out around 85 pounds. The Siberian huskies, roughly half that size, were given 100 to one odds of winning. But then the Siberian team damn near won the race that year.

It starts with the first time Siberian dogs were seen in the Alaska territory, at least by white settlers. Should be noted that the indigenous people had a history of trading with the people of Siberia. Probably saw the dogs before then. In 1910, a Scotsman named Charles Mall Ramsey imported 70 more Siberian dogs and formed three teams to compete in the All Alaska Sweepstakes, and his teams won

first, second, and fourth that year. Those little dogs could mush their fluffy little asses off. In 1913, Leonard Sepulow was entrusted with raising and training a group of Siberian dogs that his boss, Joffit Lindberg, had purchased as a gift for a Norwegian, famed Norwegian explorer. Roald Amundsen, the first man to lead a successful Antarctic expedition to the South Pole, now he was considered an expedition to the Arctic Pole. Seppala cared for 15 of these dogs, including females and puppies.

Lindberg wanted Seppala to train the dogs for this new expedition all the way up to the North Pole. Sepulah later said, I literally fell in love with them from the start, and I could hardly wait for sledding snow to start their training. Two weeks later, Roald Amundsen cancels his planned expedition, and now these dogs are just given to Sepulah. And by the end of 1913, Sepulah was known as a more than capable dog driver. Many of the best sled dogs and gnome could be found in his kennel. A dozen years later, when the diphtheria outbreak hit, he was considered an elite dog driver, best in the area.

And that's why he was chosen for the Great Race of Mercy. On January 26th of 1925, 300,000 units of antitoxin were located at the Anchorage Railroad Hospital. The serum was packed up, given to train conductor Frank Knight. Sounds like a train conductor, Frank Knight. It was then rushed approximately 300 miles to Nenana and arrived there January 27. This would be enough to contain the epidemic until an even larger shipment of antitoxin could get to Nome.

The U.S. Public Health Service located 1.1 million units in various West Coast hospitals. That would be put on the next steamship out of Seattle. It would not arrive in Seward, a port town near Anchorage, until February 7th. On January 27th, despite a high-pressure system coming from the Arctic and a second system burying the Alaska Panhandle, with temperatures dropping down to negative 50 degrees Fahrenheit, the dog's letters were sent out. Governor Scott Bone, pretty sweet name for governor, Governor Bone gave final authorization for the dog sled relay, ordered US Postal Inspector Edward Wetzler, not as cool as the name, to arrange a relay of the best drivers and dogs

across the interior of the territory. This was a last minute change from the original plan to have only one driver heading from Nenana to meet Sepulah. The teams would travel day and night until they reached Leonard Sepulah at New Lato. On the night of January 27th 1925 a train arrived in Nenana containing the 20-pound package of antitoxin serum wrapped in a protective layer of fur. Just this one little 20-pound package, capable of saving so many lives. And the relay race began upon its arrival. And before we dive into the action, time for today's mid-show sponsor break. If you don't want to hear these ads, you can sign up for our Patreon,

become a space lizard for $5 a month, and get the entire catalog ad free and more. And I'm back. And now let's hear how the great race of mercy unfolded. Sepulah had already left Nome for Nulato a few hours before the train arrived with the serum in Nanana. The first musher headed to meet him was a character named William Wild Bill Shannon. Wild Bill was given the 20 pound packet to the train station. Shannon had a team of nine dogs led by a five-year-old named Blackie. Shannon chose to divert his team from the Iditarod Trail, which had ruts at the time that were considered pretty dangerous for the dogs. He instead traveled along the ice of the Tanana River. It was so damn cold, sometimes he would hop off his sled and run alongside it

just to keep him freezing. Shannon and his dogs arrived at a roadhouse in the tiny settlement of Minto, Alaska at 3 a.m. Parts of Shannon's face were turning black from severe frostbite. By this point, the temperature had reached negative 62 degrees Fahrenheit. Holy shit. Shannon warmed the antitoxin and himself by the fire for four hours, then removed three dogs from his team and continued on. Sadly, two of those three dogs, some sources say all three that he left behind would die from frostbitten lungs.

The air was so fucking cold, it literally froze their lungs and they couldn't breathe. The first leg of the journey lasted 52 miles, ended in Tolovana, where just a handful of hardy settlers lived near a natural hot spring. Their wild Bill handed off the serum to driver Edgar Callens. These relays were averaged 6 miles per hour with each leg averaging 30 miles.

Callens had come to Minto the night before, before being sent to Tolovana to meet Wild Bill there. Shannon arrived at the Roadhouse in Tolovana at 11 a.m. January 28th. He transferred the antitoxin to Callan's who warmed it up, departed. The temperature had risen to a balmy negative 56 degrees Fahrenheit. Callan then traveled 31 miles to Manly Hot Springs without incident and arrived at 4 p.m. Well, I say without incident but the owner of the Roadhouse in Manly

reported that he had to pour hot water over Callan's hands to get them free from the sled's handlebar because they were frozen to it. Just brutal weather. Drivers Dan Green and Johnny Folger then ran the antitoxin with their dogs from Manly Hot Springs to another roadhouse in Fish Lake. No town, just a smattering of cabins and a place for people traveling through to grab a bed for the night, maybe a hot meal. And from Fish Lake to Tanita through the rest of the day and night. And quick note on these road houses, they used to be scattered all over the most remote parts of Alaska,

manned by industrious pioneers and hermits. They sprang up along various trails and rivers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, serving trappers, miners, traders, with food, lodging, essential supplies. They ranged from temporary tents to permanent log structures, often spaced every 15 to 20 miles along major routes like the Valdez Fairbanks Trail. These roadhouses played a crucial role in the development of the Alaskan frontier,

acting as trading posts, hospitals, and even post offices. And without them, there would have been no great race of mercy. Hundreds of people had known the surrounding area would have very likely died. On January 29, the serum was handed off to six drivers and their teams over the course of the day, from Sam Joseph to Titus Nikolai to Dave Corning to Harry Pitka to Bill McCartney to Edgar Nolner. Those drivers covered 170 miles from Tanana through Galena, a new settlement for whites in the area at least, that had

just formed seven years earlier to supply nearby lead ore mines. During the night, Edgar handed the package to his brother George Nullner. Meanwhile, two new cases of diphtheria reported back in Nome. And now the health crisis is making headlines in major cities across the U.S. like San Francisco, Washington, D.C., New York. It's being discussed on the radio. Alaska Roadhouse owners are providing updates via phone and telegraph lines. On January 30th, driver George Nullner traveled 18 miles to Bishop Mountain, another remote

roadhouse, arriving at 3 a.m. Moosher Charlie Evans now took his place, heading out into the foggy morning, but his team was made of mixed breed dogs that were not well equipped to handle that particularly harsh conditions or those particularly harsh conditions and he forgot to protect their vulnerable areas and numerous of his dogs collapsed from frostbite, forcing Evans to lead the team himself. By the time he arrived in Nalato at 10 a.m. where indigenous people had lived for centuries and where a Russian fur trader established an outpost in 1838,

both his lead dogs were dead. Driver Tommy Patsy departed minutes after his arrival. Back in Nome, there were over two dozen new cases of diphtheria and another death was reported that same day. One reporter from Nome wrote, All hope is in the dogs and their heroic drivers. Nome appears to be a deserted city. Nome Mayor George Maynard and the Alaska Territories delegate to U.S. Congress Dan Sutherland discussed flying the antitoxin into Nome again, but they were rejected by people who actually

understood that was impossible, like the Bush pilots, the Navy, and the governor. Governor Scott Bone, though, he decided to speed up the relay by authorizing more drivers to participate in the latter half of the relay from Nulato to Nome. Mark Summers from the Hammond Board of Health made the arrangements. He brought in Gunnar Kassin, a Hammond employee and a protege of elite musher Leonard Sepulah. While all this was happening, driver Tommy Patti traveled 36 miles to Kaltag where indigenous people have seasonally lived for centuries to fish and where Russians settled the area in the early 19th century before a gold boom hit the area in the 1880s.

And he gave the antitoxin to a driver called Jack Screw who took it to a place called Old Woman Shelter. There was another roadhouse. Love these quirky names. He did not arrive until January 31st. Driver Victor Anagik then received the antitoxin and traveled 34 miles to the shore of Una LeCleet. I had to stop this recording so many times to figure out how to say that name remotely

correctly. Town on the coast. Another town where local indigenous peoples have lived for centuries. An important trading spot between the Athabaskan people who lived in Alaska's interior and the Inupiat people on the coast. Russian traders settled the area in the 1830s. Americans began to move into the area by the end of the 19th century. Nearly 300 people lived there in 1925, about 800 people today. There the antitoxin was handed off to driver Miles Gonnigan,

who traveled 40 more miles, and while he did the temperature drop further to negative 70 degrees Fahrenheit. That is weather where you could so easily die. I've never been in weather even remotely that cold. I think the coldest weather I've ever been in was somewhere around negative 20 degrees and that was just fucking brutal. Just you just feel your face tighten up the second you walk outside. I don't really actually know how to say this guy's name. Gunagunin. G Money took the serum. The guy whose last name starts with a G and a bunch of continents mushed together. He took the serum to another roadhouse at Shakhtulik. Indigenous people have lived in that area for 6,000 to 8,000 years. The beginnings of the current

town of a few hundred people date back to 1839. Back in 1925, less than a hundred people were living there. And until the 1960s, when they were largely replaced by snowmobiles, dog sledding was the area's primary mode of transportation. Most of the towns I mentioned, dog sledding was the main mode of transportation outside of just, you know, walking a short distance. And that place, this Shaktulik, is where Nome's Leonard Sepulah was supposed to take over and rejoin our story, but he wasn't there. Luckily, driver Henry Ivanov was waiting in case Sepulah didn't make it on time. Ivanov spent some time warming the antitoxin before heading back out into the storm,

intending to encounter Seppulchral along the trail. The wind chill had now dropped the temperature all the way to negative 85 degrees Fahrenheit. At negative 40 degrees, just for reference, any exposed skin will freeze almost instantly. Negative 85. Not sure anybody even knows how fast you can die in that weather if you're not completely bundled up with very heavy winter gear. And yet these Alaska sled dogs are running through that shit naked. Disaster struck on this leg of the journey when during the run Ivanov's dog team, because of low visibility, they crashed into a fucking reindeer. The blizzard-like conditions. While untangling his dogs from the reindeer. He incredibly spotted Sepulah and shouted,

the serum, the serum, I have it here. Sepulah stopped for the transfer, sped off towards Norton Sound now, the most dangerous part of this very dangerous relay race. Sepulah will travel a full 91 miles for his portion of the relay. He and his dogs have already traveled an incredible 170 miles from Nome to intercept the relay.

So, quick math, he and his dogs mushed an incredible 261 miles in the coldest portion of an especially cold northern Alaskan winter. The average sled dog team has been traveling 30 miles for their leg, a third of what Sepulah and his team would travel not counting the huge 170 mile journey from Nome to intercept the relay. As mentioned earlier, Sepulah's lead dog, 12, 12 year old Siberian Husky Togo, who had logged tens of thousands of miles of travel now over the course of his life. A little more about this beautiful good boy.

Togo was born October 17th, 1913. His mom was called Dolly and per the American Kennel Club is considered the foundation bitch in the breed's development. And the breed referred to as the Siberian Husky. And I don't know anything about Molly's or Dolly's temperament. Could have been a very nice dog, just technically a bitch. If you own a Siberian Husky today, there's a very good chance it is related to Togo. Togo was named after Togo Hachiro, Japanese Admiral who fought in the Russo-Japanese War. Togo became known for his strength, endurance, and intelligence, became Sepulah's most prized dog. The two were inseparable for most of Togo's life.

Many argued that Sepulah and Togo were the true heroes of the race because they covered the most ground and also the most dangerous part of the relay race. Sepulah wrote about the great race of mercy in his unpublished autobiography before he died. Afterwards, I thought of the ice and the darkness and the terrible wind and the irony that men can build planes and ships, but when gnome needed life in little packages of serum, it took dogs to bring it through. Seppala's team for this race consisted of 20 dogs.

He had chosen to take an extremely dangerous shortcut across the ice over Norton Sound and there his team struggled to gain traction. High winds increased the risk of the ice breaking apart, sending them adrift to their certain death. His team arrived at a roadhouse at Isaac's Point on the far side of the route over the Norton Sound at 8 p.m. for their first day of traveling and just one day they'd covered a full 84 miles, averaging 8 miles per hour. They mushed a lot faster, for a lot longer, a lot further than the other sled dog teams. At Isaac's point, the team rested and then left at 2 a.m. on February 1st. The wind at this point gusting it up to 65 miles per hour.

Seppala took the dogs back to the ice of the Sound, continued to follow the shoreline. His team descended to the next roadhouse at the little primarily indigenous town of Gullivin, named for a 19th century Swedish missionary, just 70 miles from Nome where Sepila handed off the antitoxin to a driver named Charlie Olsen at 3 a.m. Sepila and his dogs nearly did not make it to Gullivin. During Sepila's return trip across the Norton Sound, he and his canine team damn near got stranded on an ice floe, big sheet of floating ice.

At one point, Sepulah tied a lead to Togo, threw the dog across five feet of freezing but not quite frozen water. Togo then attempted to pull the ice floe, supporting the sled to land, but the line snapped. And for a moment, it looked like Sepulah and the rest of the dogs were going to float out to sea and freeze to death. But then how cool is this? Togo, such an incredibly smart dog, somehow thought to grab the line out of the water and he then rolled it around his shoulders like a harness and pulled the team to safety. Bojangles has tears

in his eyes. Holy shit. Back in Nome, there were now 28 active cases of diphtheria. It was critical to the serum get there soon, but the blizzard getting worse. At one point, winds were reaching 80 miles an hour. Nome's physician, Dr. Curtis Welch, ordered the relay to stop until the storm passed, insisting that a delay was better than losing the antitoxin altogether. During his journey, Charlie Olson was blown off the trail, suffered severe frostbite on his hands while putting blankets on his dogs to keep them from dying. The windchill was pushing below 70 or negative 70 degrees Fahrenheit now. Olson arrived in Bluff at 7 p.m. February 1st to meet the final musher, 42 year old Gunnar Kossen, the

last addition to the race. Kossen had a team of 13 dogs from Leonard Sepple as kennel and his lead dog, three-year-old Balto, was about to the race. Kosson had a team of 13 dogs from Leonard Sepple as kennel, and his lead dog, three-year-old Balto, was about to become famous. Sepple had not selected Balto for the journey because he thought the dog was unprepared to lead the team. Sepple had also had Balto neutered as a puppy because he thought he didn't show much promise.

He was wrong. Gunnar Kosson waited until 10 p.m. for the storm to break, but conditions only getting worse, so he said, fuck it it just went for it anyway He and his dog set out into the raging blizzard to complete their journey Visibility was so poor that Kassen couldn't always see the dogs directly in front of him Didn't even realize he had passed Solomon his next drop-off point until he was two miles away, and he decided to continue on The wind was so strong that at one point his sled was flipped over and that accident

sent the antitoxin flying into a snow drift. Kassen had to dig to the snowbank, had to remove his gloves in the process to find the package which resulted in him damn near losing some fingers to frostbite. Kassen arrived at another roadhouse in point safety at 3 a.m. ahead of schedule. Driver Ed Rohn was actually the one

who was supposed to complete the final leg of the relay now, but because Kastin was early, Rohn was still asleep. The weather had improved slightly, so Kastin just said, hell with it, took a short rest and decided to finish the relay himself. Kastin, his dog Balto, and the rest of the team traveled the final 25 miles to Nome, arriving on Front Street at 5.30 a.m. February 2nd, 1925. There, Kostin stumbled to the front of his team, collapsed from exhaustion before a few witnesses before he said, damn fine dog. Kostin later told a reporter it was Balto who led the way, the credit is his. The final leg of the journey lasted 53 miles and total relay race took 127 and a half hours, or five and a half days, cutting the previous speed record for that journey in half.

Sadly, four, or some sources say five, dogs died from exposure. Gunnar Kassen wrote a short recap of his journey, which was given to the International News Service, published in newspapers February 3, 1925. He wrote, My big black dog Balto must get all the credit as far as my part of the journey goes. In the long trek across the snow covered in blizzardly trail, it was Balto's eyes that saw when human eyes had failed. Cawson wrote that the lights were off in the cabin where he was supposed to hand off the

serum, so he headed to Nome himself. He said I was supposed to meet Ed Rhone, another relay man there, but it was so dark I missed him, and so decided to continue on to Gnome. I thought it best, better than to cause delay looking for him and changing dog harnesses. While the people of Gnome were rejoicing that they had been saved from certain death, Leonard Sepulah was a little heartbroken. His beloved dog Togo had gotten lost after he'd taken off chasing a reindeer while he was heading back to Gnome. Fucking Togo! So smart, also so mischievous. had gotten lost after he'd taken off chasing a reindeer while he was heading back to Nome. Fucking Togo! So smart, also so mischievous.

When Seppala saw the headlines praising Balto and Kostin, his sadness intensified. Thankfully, Togo found his way home about a week after the serum run had ended. That dog was indestructible. And Seppala was reunited with his best friend. Three weeks after the residents of Nome were injected with serum, the outbreak was over and the quarantine had ended. Dr. Welch would later estimate that around a hundred people had died between Nome and a variety of surrounding Inuit villages. A lot of death, but it would have been so much worse without the heroics of all the dogs, letters, and their teams. Despite all the people

and dogs who worked together to save Nome, initially it was mainly Balto's name that made headlines. Gay Salisbury, author of The Cruelest Miles, one of the most well-known books on the serum run, told the New York Times that papers focused so heavily on Balto because it was too complicated to showcase 20 drivers and 150 dogs. The relay as a concept was not as exciting as Balto crossed the finish line. By December of 1925, some news outlets were giving Balto credit for completing the entire relay race. Sadly, this reporting slant caused some big problems back home. Sepulah and Kassin had been good friends before the serum run. Sepulah was

actually, or Kassin's, not Kassin's, mentor before the race. But now they'll never speak again following the relay race. Within weeks, Balto went Hollywood. Well, Kassan went Hollywood on Balto's behalf. Within weeks, Balto had a Hollywood contract to star in a 30-minute movie titled, Balto's Race to Gnome. After a nine-month tour across the U.S., Balto was present in Central Park in New York City on December 17, 1925 for the unveiling of a bronze statue made in his likeness. Sepulow was intensely resentful of Balto's fame at the expense of his dog Togo, who led the longest, most dangerous stretch of the relay.

He would later say, 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 statute 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. And 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. In a 1927 New York Times article Seppala said that Balto was not the hero of the

race and claimed that a dog named Fox actually co-led with Balto. There were some doubts that Balto actually led the team because there were no records of him being used as a lead dog before 1925. Seppala said Balto was never in a winning team and called him a scrub dog before 1925. Seppala said Balto was never in a winning team and called him a scrub dog. To this day there's still speculation about Balto's run, especially because the photos of Balto and Gennar Kausten arriving in Nome were recreations, taking hours after they finished the race. Additionally, some have said that Gennar Kausten chose not to wake Ed Rohn, the person who was supposed to be the final musher,

because he wanted all the glory for himself. Well whatever the truth, the 1925 serum was Togo's last long-distance run. Sepple and his dogs also toured the country. They did that in 1926, even appeared in an advertising campaign for Lucky Strike Cigarettes. Wow, that race got so much media attention. Their tour ended at Madison Square Garden in New York City where Togo was now presented with, not a statue, but a medal of honor. And then Sepulah and New England musher, Elizabeth Ricker,

opened to kennel together for Siberian Huskies in Poland, Spring, Maine, where Togo lived out his final days. And that was the start of the spread of the Siberian Husky breed in the lower 48 states in Canada. The breed was admitted to the AKC in 1930. At age 16, Togo was euthanized December 5, 1929, and Seppala said of him in 1960,

I never had a better dog than Togo. His stamina, loyalty, and intelligence could not be improved upon. Togo was the best dog that ever traveled the Alaska Trail. That's awesome. Seppala had Togo custom mounted to preserve his body. Togo's body was displayed in the Yale exhibit about notable dogs, but then transferred years later to another museum and then at that museum got forgotten about in storage until an employee found him again in the 80s. And at that point some Alaskans asked to have his body sent back to their state and he was. And now Togo's preserved body is displayed in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race headquarters

in Wasilla, Alaska. It's been displayed there since 1983. Sepulah himself returned to Alaska in 1932. His kennel closed down. His dogs were given to his friend Harry Wheeler in Quebec, Canada. According to the Siberian Husky Club of America, all of the breeds registered dogs can trace their ancestry to dogs from the Sepulah Ricker kennel in Maine or to Harry Wheeler's kennel in Quebec. Sepul and his wife had been married to a Belgian born woman named Constance since 1915 with whom he had a daughter, lived in Fairbanks for over a decade before moving

to Seattle Washington for the last two decades of their lives. Leonard Seppala died on January 28th, 1967 at the age of 89, and ironically, he died of diphtheria. After all that, that dumb motherfucker never got vaccinated himself. What a shame. Or would be if it was true. No, he died from just being 89 years old. At the age of 81, Sepple had written in his journal, When I come to the end of the trail, I filled it along with my many friends. Togo will be waiting and I know that everything will be all right. I love how much he loved that dog. Gunnar Kassen and his wife Anna moved to Everett, Washington, just north of Seattle in 1952. There on November 27th, 1960, Kassin died of cancer or Kassin.

He was 78 years old. And now you might be wondering what happened to Balto. Well, when Kassin returned to, or wanted to return to Alaska following his big US tour, the company who sponsored his tour sold his dogs to the highest bidder. How fucked up. Balto and six other dogs were sold to a vaudeville circuit, also called a dime museum per the New York Times. In February of 1927, former prize fighter and Cleveland businessman George Kimball visited Los Angeles, went to the novelty museum there,

or a novelty museum there, and found Balto and the other dogs chained up on a stage, like chained to a sled and looking real depressed, mangy. Kimball was horrified by the poor conditions these dogs were being kept in, so he reached out to the Plain Dealer, the major newspaper of Cleveland, to appeal to citizens for donations to bring the dogs back. In two weeks, the people of Cleveland raised $1,500. That was enough. Dogs were taken to the Cleveland Metro Park Zoo on March 19, 1927, where Balto spent the rest of his

life being loved and well-fed. And then Balto was euthanized March 14th, 1933 at the age of 14. And fuck Gennar Kosson for just dumping him off following his big tour, especially when he was not the main hero of the story. Starting to see why Seppala stopped talking to him. Balto's body was preserved by a taxidermist and still displayed today at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. Balto was never used for breeding because, as mentioned, he was neutered as a puppy.

Since 1973, the 1925 Gnome Serum Run has been honored every March with the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, which covers the same trails that mushers traveled back in 1925. And the Leonard Sepulah Humanitarian Award is given to the Iditarod musher who takes the best care of their dog

and doesn't abandon them like the fucking clown, Gunnar Kosson. Despite the truth that no dog did more than Togo, to get that serum delivered, Balto has continued to receive most of the glory for finishing the race. A popular animated movie about Balto was released in 1995, which only added to his historic fame at the expense of the other dogs and drivers.

In 1998, Alaska attempted to pass legislation requiring that Balto's body be moved to the Iditarod headquarters and placed beside Togo. But Cleveland pushed back against that. States reached a compromise when a museum in Anchorage proposed borrowing Balto for a special display. The proposal was accepted and then Balto was returned to Cleveland following that. The Cleveland Metropark Zoo has honored Togo with a statue in 1997. In 2001, Togo was also given a small statue in Seward Park in New York City.

How funny, man. Two Alaskan sled dogs from a century ago. Both have statues today in Manhattan. If he were alive to see it, Leonard Sepulah would have been pleased by the 2019 Disney movie Togo, which covers his story and stars Diesel, a dog descended from Togo. Willem Dafoe portrayed Leonard Sepulah. Haven't seen that movie, but probably should. Further credit is also due to Alaska native dog sledders. Most of the other names you heard of the various sledders were natives who collectively covered almost two thirds of the run.

The 1925 serum run to Nome still recognized by many as a historic feat of bravery and determination, the drivers and dogs who participated truly risked their lives to save others. The great race of mercy, when a group of good boys, the bestest boys, oh, the bestest boys, truly saved the day. When some of man's best friends laid down their lives in a race through snow and ice to save the lives

of some of America's most remote, off the grid Americans. And that's it for this canine, loving edition of Time Sucksuck Short Sucks. Any other dog owners picture their own dogs trying to lead a dog sled team? I love Penny Pooper and Ginger Bell. Oh, Penny and Dee Dee. Oh, Penny and Dee Dee. But I do not think they would fare well as sled dogs.

I don't think they, especially if they were teamed up with a bunch of other doodles, could pull me or literally anyone else for more than maybe a couple feet. I think they'd probably just fall over and die if they were tasked with a trek through snow and ice where the temperature could drop to far below zero. But they're very cute. They're very sweet babies. And they would be happy to ride in the sled while other, heartier, smarter, stronger, more focused dogs did the pulling. I recorded this episode outside of the Suck Dungeon Studio, just like I did with the Gary

Hynek episode. If the sounds a bit different to you, hopefully it's not distracting. If you enjoyed this story, check out the rest of the Bad Magic catalog. Beefier episodes at Time Suck every Monday at noon Pacific time. New episodes of the now long running paranormal podcast, Scared to Death, every Tuesday at midnight with two episodes of the now long running paranormal podcast Scared to Death every Tuesday at midnight with two episodes of nightmare fuel, fictional horror I'm having a lot of fun with thrown into the mix each month. Thank you to Olivia Lee for the initial research and topic suggestion and thanks to Logan Keith

polishing up the sound of today's episode. Please go to badmagicproductions.com for all your bad magic needs and have a great weekend.