Page 63 - Parks Highway Bearfoot
P. 63
Parks Highway 0 with Bearfoot
NENANA
The Original "Iditarod"
The Iditarod Sled Dog Race begins every March in Anchorage, and then heads off towards Nome. But the first Iditarod race was a 1925 serum run that be- gan in Nenana and followed old roadhouses along a winter trail mail route to Nome. When a diph- theria epidemic threatened the people of Nome , a 20-pound capsule holding serum was railed north from Seward to Nenana. On January 27th, in the
darkest part of winter, it was colder than -40°F and planes couldn't fly. A relay team of 20 mushers, using over a hundred dogs, passed the package from village to village along the trail to Nome. They arrived on February 2nd, with the serum firmly wrapped in quilting, frozen solid, but still effective. The trail to Iditarod from Nenana was just one of a tangle of hundreds of Native American trails that have crisscrossed Alaska for thousands of years.
