The Thin White Line (excerpted fromThe Cruelest Miles)
In 1925 a deadly diphtheria epidemic swept through icebound Nome, Alaska. The only hope for survival—antitoxin—sat 674 frozen miles (1,085 kilometers) away. There was only one way to get it to Nome in time: by dogsled. By Gay Salisbury and Laney Salisbury

Topic:  1925 Serum Run

Citation:

Salisbury, Gay, and Laney Salisbury. The Cruelest Miles: The Heroic Story of Dogs and Men in a Race Against an Epidemic. 1st edition. New York, New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2003. Web.

By January 25, 300,000 units of antitoxin had been located in Anchorage. That amount wouldn't be sufficient to wipe out the epidemic, but Welch hoped it could at least keep it in check for a little while. The problem was how to get the serum to Nome. With the Bering Sea icebound, only the land route was viable. In winter, mail and supplies were shipped to the ice-free port of Seward in southeast Alaska and then traveled 411 miles (661 kilometers) north to Nenana on the state's only major railroad. From there, mail teams took about 25 days to cover the 674 miles (1,085 kilometers) west to Nome. It was a start-and-stop route, divided among several mushers, with overnight rests.

But board of health member Mark Summers had an idea: Cover the route using fast dogsled teams, running one east from Nome to meet the serum that would be relayed west from the railhead at Nenana. The teams would meet halfway on the trail, at Nulato. The run from Nome would be grueling, but Summers knew one man who could do it: a scrappy Norwegian named Leonhard Seppala.

At 47, Seppala was as strong as he'd been the day he had arrived in Nome to search for gold in the summer of 1900. He was a rare natural athlete, a man of unusual strength and endurance. While the majority of mushers would have considered 30 miles (48 kilometers) to be a hard day's drive, Seppala often traveled 50 (80 kilometers), sometimes even 100 miles (160 kilometers), logging 12 hours at a stretch on the trail. In a single winter, he covered 7,000 miles (11,265 kilometers).

Seppala would have to travel more than 300 miles (483 kilometers) to Nulato, on one of Alaska's most hazardous trails. Much of it ran along the blizzard-prone coast of Norton Sound, with a dangerous 42-mile (68-kilometer) shortcut across the frozen water. Depending on conditions, this shortcut could be either a long stretch of glare ice—a slippery sheen that had been ground down by wind and sand—or a course littered with crevices, giant pieces of ice rubble, and tiny frozen spears that could shred a dog's paws. The biggest risk, however, was getting separated from shore: With little warning, the ice could break up and carry a team out into the Bering Sea.

Seppala was the fastest musher in Alaska, and his record was legendary, earning him the nickname King of the Trail, so his chances of succeeding were good. But George Maynard, Nome's mayor and an advocate of aviation, suggested one last option: to fly in the serum. Board members were skeptical. Winter flights were extremely dangerous. Besides, in all of Alaska, there were only two or three planes—dilapidated surplus craft from World War I, with open cockpits—and two pilots, both of whom were out of state at the time. Maynard persisted: A Justice Department agent in Fairbanks on business had flying experience, and one of the planes, the Anchorage, could be put back in flying shape within three days; the flight itself would take no more than six hours.

The decision whether to send the serum by dog team or by plane would have to be made by the territorial governor, Scott C. Bone. The weather had turned bitterly cold. For more than a week, temperatures in the interior had been at their lowest levels in nearly 20 years; could a pilot survive a flight in an open cockpit in temperatures of minus 50 degrees (-10° Celsius)? With snowstorms and gales over the past several days creating havoc, Bone could only imagine the danger of flying a plane over the Bering Sea if a storm kicked up. Snow and ice could clog the water-cooled engine, and engine failure usually meant death. Also, the days were shorter in January, and the pilot would have a limited number of daylight hours in which to fly safely; flying at night was a risky proposition. The Anchorage had no navigational tools save an unreliable magnetic compass. The pilot would have no lights to guide him along the route and no radio to warn him of an approaching blizzard. Until the late 1930s, the average plane in Alaska was expected to crash twice or even three times a year. If the plane went down, the serum would go down, too, and so would Nome's chance to fight the epidemic.

Late on the afternoon of January 26, Bone made his decision: He chose the dog teams. At a time when American innovation and ingenuity were changing the world with production lines and radio communication, Bone put his faith in the folk wisdom of Alaska's natives. The airplane might be the way of the future, but for the people of Nome, the dog team was the only hope for the present.