The Iditarod - Alaskan Sled Dog Race

Countdown to

Iditarod XXXIV
Starts March 4, 2006 at 10:00 a.m. in Anchorage, Alaska
Restart - Sunday March 5, 2006 at 2:00 p.m. in Wasilla, Alaska

The Iditarod race is an annual event that first began on March 3, 1973 in which mushers race by dog-sled from Anchorage to Nome, Alaska. Two shorter races had occurred prior to 1973; the first in 1967 that fielded 53 mushers and the second, in 1969, in which only eight mushers participated.

The Alaskan Iditarod Sled Dog Race is a tradition that was inspired by an actual event. During the winter of 1925, a deadly outbreak of diptheria occurred in Nome that threatened the population of this town located along the Bering Sea. The closest source of serum however, was in the city of Anchorage, a town over 1,000 miles away to the south-east along the Cook Inlet. There was a single aircraft that could have quickly delivered the medicine, unfortunately, it had been dismantled for the winter. Between Anchorage and Nome lay a vast Alaskan wilderness; an incrediably large area of uninhabited land, frozen tundra, rough terrain, and no available road network that could be used to transport the life-saving serum.

In desperation, officials turned to moving the medicine by sled dog. The solution was to form a dog-sled relay to deliver the serum from Anchorage to the stricken town. The Alaska Railroad first ferried the medicine 250 miles north to Nenana. From there, twenty volunteer dog-sled drivers relayed the serum non-stop the remaining 674 miles. When the first musher left Nenana, the temperature hovered at 50 below zero, a temperature not too uncommon today during the winter months. According to legend, the serum was nearly lost when a huge gust of wind toppled the sled of the final musher. The musher frantically dug the serum out of the snow with his bare hands, righted his sled and continued on.

Against all odds, Gunner Kaassen drove his heroic dog team into the streets of Nome just six days later, on February 2, 1925, In the lead of his team was a husky named Balto, whose furry face would soon became known around the world. A year later, in honor of the epic trek, admirers erected a statue of Balto in New York City's Central Park.

We lived in Anchorage between 1977 and 1980 and had the opportunity to witness the start of two Itidarod races as they began from Fourth and D Streets in downtown Anchorage. When I began teaching elementary school, I discovered that I could use this event as a way to introduce my class to various science, math, and social studies activities as they related to weather, biomes, literature, and computational skills. Our class would select their favorite mushers from the List of Official Iditarod Mushers and follow them throughout the race, get their daily information from the Official site of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.

In 1997, I purchased the Classroom Information Packet for Teachers. It contained some really nice items including Official 1997 Iditarod Boosters Buttons , four videos of previous years race (start in Anchorage, restart from Wasilla, race video, and the finish in Nome), dog booties and harness (for a small husky size dog), a cachet dated March 3, 1990 that was actually carried from Anchorage to Nome, and even our own Land Deed for a small (ok really tiny) piece of the Iditarod Trail!

If any 5th grade class in Alaska is interested in being pen pals with ours, please let us know!