Traveling in temperatures as cold as -50 degrees Fahrenheit, Balto and his brave team completed the nearly 700-mile journey across Alaska's wilderness to deliver life-saving medicine in 1925.
To this day, almost exactly 100 years after his dramatic story unfolded, Balto remains one of history’s most famous dogs. The 1995 children’s animated film, named after the titular dog, introduced a new generation of people to the story of this heroic canine – though at the time, most children watching the movie likely didn’t even realize it was actually inspired by a true story.
In 1925, a deadly epidemic of diphtheria ravaged the small town of Nome, Alaska. The total population of the town was only around 1,400 – seven of whom were dead, 19 of whom were sick, and 150 of whom were being watched closely for fear of infection. To make matters worse, the nearest source of a cure was hundreds of miles away, across the dangerous Alaskan wilderness. Even the most optimistic of people wagered the town’s fate was sealed.
Then, a Siberian husky named Balto saved the day.
At first, Balto was just one of 150 sled dogs deployed to deliver medicine to the town through gale-force winds, whiteout snow, and dangerous ice. And although Balto had never stood out from the rest of the pack before, he proved to be surprisingly skillful and resilient in the last leg of the journey. Now known as the Great Race of Mercy, or the Nome Serum Run of 1925, the race to deliver a cure to Nome should have taken weeks, but by breaking the journey up into several stretches, a group of 20 mushers managed to reduce it to just over five days.
Wikimedia CommonsA statue of Balto in New York City’s Central Park.
The journey began on January 27, 1925, when 300,000 doses of antitoxin arrived in Nenana by train from Anchorage. The cargo was placed inside a metallic cylinder, then taken out into the Alaskan wilds by the first musher, “Wild Bill” Shannon, who arrived at the first handoff site frostbitten and having lost two of his dogs. Eventually, the cargo made its way to Leonhard Seppala, who set out confidently with his 12-year-old sled dog, Togo, leading the pack.
Togo led Seppala’s pack until they reached the next musher, Charlie Olson, who then passed the serum off to Gunnar Kaasen. But Togo no longer led the pack. Instead, Kaasen completed the last leg of the journey with the “scrub dog,” Balto, as his frontrunner. Despite the fact that Kaasen couldn’t even see in the whiteout conditions, and temperatures hovered around -40 degrees Fahrenheit, Balto pressed on, successfully leading the pack to Nome, with the serum, on February 2.
Finally able to rest for the first time since the journey began, Kaasen looked to Balto and said, “Damn fine dog.” And with that, Balto became a national hero who remains beloved nearly a century later.
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