A Very Good Boy Named Togo

Today, we are talking about a very brave and tenacious sled dog who helped save a small Alaska town from certain death on an Arctic January night in 1925.

Transcript

On today's episode, we are doing something a little bit different. Each season, we'll bring you a feature episode called "A Very Good Boy" or "A Very Good Girl," and take you through the true tale of an animal that has left a mark on the hearts of humankind.

Today, we are talking about a very brave and tenacious sled dog who helped save a small Alaska town from certain death on an Arctic January night in 1925. A 12-year-old Siberian Husky named Togo ran hard across the barren Norton Sound, an inlet of the sub-zero Bering Sea off of the west coast of Alaska. He led a sled dog team that beat a path into the frozen terrain packed with ice and snow as they carried a life-saving medicine bound for Nome, Alaska. The team was in a race against time as the lives of 28 people hung in the balance. The people of Nome had 20 hours left and time was running out. Togo and his team cut through the icy tundra as he led them into the cold, cold night. This is the story of a very good boy named Togo.

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Since time immemorial, the Athabascan, a nomadic Indigenous people of Alaska, thrived in one of the world's most inhospitable regions. Subzero temperatures, never-ending stretches of darkness, and extreme ice and snow made the region deadly for most, but the Athabascan were innovative in traversing the fierce tundra. They followed the migration patterns of moose and caribou and traveled with everything they needed to make shelter and hunt, using snowshoes made from hides stretched over birch frames, long handmade toboggans, and dogs that carried packs on their backs stuffed with meat and hunting supplies.

Dogs were essential to Indigenous life in the tundra. They could see, hear, taste, and smell that which was beyond the senses of man. Of all the astounding innovations for surviving in the Arctic, none may be so effective as harnessing a team of dogs to a sled. Over hundreds of years, the Indigenous created sleds and harnesses crafted from wood, walrus tusks, caribou antlers, whale bone, and rawhide. Early records show evidence that Indigenous peoples of Alaska would outfit their dogs' feet with sealskin socks to protect them from the elements. They coated the sled runners with an icy paste of moss mixed with water, creating a slick surface that glided the sleds across the ice more easily.

It's said that the French adapted dog sledding when they colonized Canada. In the U.S., dog sledding remained a niche sport in the north until 1896, when the Klondike Gold Rush exploded and hundreds of thousands of people poured into the Yukon in search of their fortune. Dog sledding was a critical means of transportation to the region's most remote areas for these would-be prospectors. Young author Jack London saw sled dogs in action in the early 1900s when he traveled to the Klondike, and in 1903 he immortalized the sled dog with his bestselling novella The Call of the Wild.

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During the heyday of the Gold Rush, Nome, Alaska was a bustling town of 20,000, but by the mid-1920s the small coastal town had a population of around 1,500 people. Positioned on the southern Seward Peninsula Coast, Nome was connected to the outside world through a harbor and through dog sled trails, which were the primary means of transporting critical supplies and daily goods to the residents.

In 1924, a sinister shadow was spreading through Nome. Curtis Welch, Nome's only doctor, placed an order for diphtheria antitoxin, a medication used to treat diphtheria, a deadly illness caused by a bacterial infection that starts in the respiratory system. If left untreated, it can spread to the nervous system, kidneys, and the heart. The town supply had expired, and while Welch hadn't seen any cases yet, he wanted to be prepared. But by the time the supply ship left Anchorage, impenetrable winter ice had already formed across Nome's harbor, rendering the town unreachable by ship. The medication delivery would have to wait until the spring thaw.

By December, a handful of Nome's children had come down with sore throats and runny noses—not out of the norm for a town where temperatures could fall to 30 below in the winter. Welch chalked their symptoms up to tonsillitis, but one month later, one child was dead and more deaths were imminent. By the time Welch realized that the children of Nome were not afflicted with tonsillitis but rather with diphtheria, a three-year-old boy was dead. Just days later, a seven-year-old girl fell ill. In desperation, Welch gave her the expired antitoxin, hoping against hope that it would still work. But hours later, she died.

Nome, cut off from the outside world until the spring, was facing a deadly epidemic with no means of stopping it. By the time the town went into quarantine, the disease had already spread to 20 confirmed cases. If the outbreak continued unchecked, it would spread out of Nome and into the rest of Northern Alaska's 10,000 residents. The mortality rate would be nearly 100%.

On January 22, 1925, Welch sent out a desperate plea via telegram to Alaska's major towns and the U.S. Public Health Service: "An epidemic of diphtheria is almost inevitable here. Stop. I am in urgent need of 1 million units of diphtheria antitoxin. Stop. Mail is only form of transportation. Stop. I have made application to Commissioner of Health of the territories for antitoxin already. Stop."

Two days later, the Alaska Board of Health convened to weigh its options. With ice rendering Nome's harbor unreachable, shipping the medication was impossible. Airplanes were relatively new technology at the time, and besides, the Arctic weather and limited daylight created poor flight conditions, and there were only two pilots who could possibly make the drop, and neither was anywhere near Alaska. The meeting grew anxious as solutions quickly faded away.

Then gold mine owner Mark Summers proposed a dog sled relay using mushers in his employ at the Pioneer Gold Mining Company. One of his mushers, Leonhard Seppala, was renowned in the sport and had won the 408-mile Alaska Sweepstakes run three years in a row. His lead dog, Togo, was 12 years old, but his reputation was just as renowned as his owner's.

Seppala was a Norwegian-American sled dog breeder, the son of a blacksmith and an Arctic fisherman. Seppala immigrated from Norway to Alaska at the age of 23 in 1900 during the Gold Rush. That winter, he worked as a dog sled driver for a mining company, making runs of up to 100 miles a day, and he fell in love with the sport. Later on, Seppala described the joy he felt at the sound of the dogs' feet pattering on the frozen ground and the magical feeling of the sled gliding across the snow. He was known in Alaska as "the Big Norwegian," a name that captured his spirit rather than his physical stature, as he stood at five foot four inches tall.

By 1913, the mining company gave Seppala a team of Siberian Huskies to train for an expedition. When the expedition was called off, Seppala kept the dogs and began his career breeding sled dogs and keeping his kennels.

Seppala's star dog, Togo, was born in 1914 at his kennels to a champion lead dog named Suggen and a Siberian import named Dolly. His coat was a muddy mosaic of cream, black, and gray, and his eyes were a deep brown. Togo was sick as a puppy and was nursed to health by Seppala's wife, Constance. It's said that Seppala attributed the fact that Togo was doted on so young to it rendering him useless as a sled dog. He was, by all accounts, a very spirited and naughty dog, constantly breaking free of his kennel to run wild and free around Seppala's known property.

Togo was rambunctious and often tangled with older, bigger dogs. In one heated play session that escalated to a fight, part of his right ear was ripped off, becoming his signature identifier. When Togo was six months old, Seppala gave him away as a pet, but the house dog life was not for him. After just a few weeks, the young dog leapt through a window, shattering the glass, and ran miles back home to Seppala and Constance.

Two months after this great escape from domesticity, Togo led his first sled dog run. Seppala was on a deadline to deliver a package for a client and tethered Togo inside his kennel to keep him from breaking out while he readied the other dogs. When the team disappeared into the horizon, Togo broke free of the leash and scaled the fence, running through the night after them. Seppala spotted Togo the next day near the team's camp. The young dog proceeded to antagonize the other dogs and the sled team, coaxing them into playing and leading them to chase reindeer.

Seppala strapped a harness on him, and as the legend goes, Togo instantly calmed down. For the very first time, he was joined to the gang line as the team made their delivery and mushed back home. Togo moved up the line until he shared the lead position. That day, he ran 75 miles—quite a feat for an inexperienced dog less than a year old. Seppala recognized an unusual precociousness in Togo and poured his energy into honing the dog's natural tenacity, intelligence, and leadership skills.

At a petite 48 pounds, Togo didn't have the typical physique of a lead dog, but lead dogs are calm, confident, and highly intelligent. Tasked with detecting danger, they must know when to obey and when to decide for themselves.

Over the years, Togo proved to be a sled dog like no other, leading Seppala's team in hundreds of runs to deliver supplies and leading the team to win several races, earning a reputation in the sport for his cunning and athleticism. Now, Seppala and Togo needed to make the most important run of their lives.

On January 24, 1925, the Alaska Board of Health unanimously voted that a dog sled relay was their best shot at getting the serum to Nome and staving off certain death. Twenty sled dog teams totaling 150 dogs volunteered for the run. Each team would run a leg of the trail, passing off the serum one to the other to the other until it reached Nome—a total of 674 miles. Mushers and their teams faced temperatures of nearly 60 below and an onslaught of blizzards that rendered visibility to almost zero. One mistake could mean disaster and would seal the fate of the people of Nome.

The distance each team would run varied, but Togo and Seppala took the most extended leg at 260 miles. They would begin immediately.

On January 26, 1925, 300,000 units of the antitoxin were located in Anchorage, wrapped in glass vials, padded, and put in a metal cylinder weighing 20 pounds. The package shipped overnight to arrive the next day in Nenana, a southern Alaska town designated as the start of the serum run. It was where the railroad met the dog sled mail trail to Nome.

On January 27, musher Wild Bill Shannon waited for the package at the Nenana train station. The temperatures were rapidly dropping, reaching 40 below zero, which put Wild Bill in a precarious position. The "Rule of the 40s" was a common refrain of mushers: there were great risks to taking teams out at 40 above zero, when ice would melt and dogs could overheat, and at 40 below, where frostbite and even death could occur. That day, the temperatures plummeted to 50 below.

An experienced musher, Wild Bill knew the risks of setting out into the tundra at such temperatures. The route ahead was 52 miles, usually covered over the course of two days with an overnight rest at a roadhouse along the trail. But Bill was going to take it in one go. His lead dog was a five-year-old Husky mix named Blackie, leading eight younger, less experienced dogs on their fateful run.

A crowd waited on the train platform, buzzing with excitement to see Wild Bill and his dogs off. The chugging of the train's great engine could be heard before the locomotive came into view. Before it came to a full stop, the conductor leapt onto the platform with a 20-pound package in hand. Wild Bill tied the precious cargo to his sled, double-checked the harnesses and his supplies, and took off into the night.

The route was rough, full of deep holes from a horse freighter that took the trail just days before. It was nearly impossible to traverse, so at great risk to himself and his dogs, Wild Bill ordered Blackie to turn onto the frozen Tanana River. The trail would be virgin but full of perils. Once on the river, Blackie quickly dodged a gaping hole in the ice, nearly throwing Wild Bill off of the sled but ultimately saving his life.

As time went on, four of the dogs were slowing their pace, falling out of the natural rhythm of the team. Wild Bill was feeling the effects of the extreme cold. His face was numb and he was losing feeling in his extremities—a sign that he would freeze to death without intervention. In desperation, he left his post on the sled and began jogging just ahead of Blackie, motivating the dogs and flowing blood to his arms and legs until he was warm enough to return to the sled. While a grim death by hypothermia lingered around him, Wild Bill remained focused on reaching the roadhouse ahead, knowing it wasn't just his and his dogs' lives that hung in the balance.

At 3 a.m. on January 28, 30 miles into his run, Wild Bill burst through the door of Johnny Campbell's Roadhouse. Parts of his face were blackened with frostbite, and blood caked the mouths of his four dogs that had struggled to keep the pace with the team. He rested by a hot fire and drank coffee to heat his body. He still had 22 miles left of the trail. Three of his dogs were succumbing to pulmonary embolism, a condition in which blood clots clog the arteries in the lungs. The fourth dog was weak, but Wild Bill needed him to make the run.

Meanwhile, three miles outside of Nome, Seppala received the call that it was time to go. As he hooked up 20 dogs to their harnesses, the dogs yelped and howled with excitement, a cacophony that could be heard for miles around, attracting a small crowd to see them off. Just as the crowd in Nenana had seen off Wild Bill, led by Togo, the team burst onto the trail and thundered through downtown Nome to the cheers and applause of onlookers who were depending on them. It was nearly 20 below zero and the wind was still—a perfect day for dog sledding.

At a roadhouse in Tolovana, 20-year-old Edgar Kallands prepared his sled dogs. Kallands was half Athabaskan, half Newfoundland, and worked as a musher for the Northern Commercial Company, delivering mail and packages. In the last 24 hours, he had been recruited to run a 31-mile leg of the relay.

At 11 a.m., Wild Bill and his exhausted team of dogs appeared across the horizon. Wild Bill emerged with a face so frostbitten it would be weeks before he could touch it, and a heart heavy with the deaths of four of his dogs. It was Kallands' turn to take the serum and hit the trail. It was 56 degrees below zero as he set out with his team. Five hours later, when he arrived in Manley Hot Springs, his hands were frozen to the sled's handlebars. The roadhouse owner had to pour boiling water to pry his hands loose.

Over the next two days, the serum passed through more than a dozen hands. But in Nome, the epidemic was rapidly getting worse. New cases of diphtheria were being diagnosed despite the quarantine. By January 30, five people were dead. Newspapers and radio stations across America reported on Nome's plight. A journalist living in the area wrote, "All hope is in the dogs and their heroic drivers. Nome appears to be a deserted city."

The governor of Alaska called for more sled dog teams for the final leg between Nulato and Nome. Even though Seppala and Togo led the fastest sled dog team in Alaska and maybe even the world, their share of the run was 260 miles. There was no room for error. More drivers would cut Seppala's first leg short and increase his odds of success. The two drivers who were recruited were Ed Rohn, who once beat Seppala in a race, and Gunnar Kaasen, who worked with Seppala at his kennels. But this change of plan required alerting Seppala, and there was no way to do that. He was already en route, and he didn't know that instead of mushing all the way to Nulato, he was supposed to stop in Shaktoolik and await the serum handoff.

At 4:30 a.m. on Friday, January 30, with the serum in hand, sled driver Charlie Evans departed Bishop Mountain for Nulato. Water from the Koyukuk River had burst through the ice and flooded the trail, causing a thick fog that rendered Charlie nearly blind to the trail in front of him. The wind blew hard, and the legs of two of his dogs began to freeze, turning blue and swelling. Suddenly, one of the dogs collapsed mid-run, and then the other. He laid the dogs into the basket of the sled, strapped a harness over his shoulder in the lead position, and ran with the dogs the rest of the trail to Nulato. When he arrived and handed off the serum, he carried the collapsed dogs into a warm cabin and laid them by the fire. Both dogs were dead the next morning.

On January 31, from Unalakleet, Alaska, on the eastern coast of the Norton Sound, Myles Gonangnan considered his fate. He was tasked with handing off the serum to Henry Ivanoff, who would hopefully intercept Seppala and his team 40 miles up the coast of the sound in Shaktoolik. He couldn't make better time if he cut across the sound, but conditions were less than ideal. The ice encasing the sound was in a constant state of flux, breaking and refreezing over and over again, cracking and groaning. Large sheets of ice could break off at any moment. The mountain-like ridges and powerful winds could burst across the sound at 70 miles per hour, and the skies above its waters were rolling with an impending storm. He would go around.

Gonangnan reached Shaktoolik at 3 p.m., hoping to encounter Seppala, who was still unaware of the relay changes, but he was nowhere to be found. Instead, Henry Ivanoff took the serum and headed for Ungalik, hoping to find Seppala on the trail and hand him the serum as time for the people of Nome began to run out.

Meanwhile, Seppala and Togo raced toward Shaktoolik, thinking he had 100 miles to go until he intercepted the serum. As the team raced across the ice, Togo suddenly picked up speed. Through sheets of snow, Seppala saw what he was after: another sled dog team was tangled in their harnesses as they fought against their lines to get at a reindeer that had interrupted their route. It was Ivanoff, who began to wave his arms frantically, shouting at Seppala, who wasn't slowing down. "The serum!" Ivanoff shouted over the bellowing winds. "I have the serum, Seppala! Break the dogs!"

But to Ivanoff, it looked like Seppala hadn't heard him and would continue on. Just before he disappeared into the blizzard, the sled came to a stop and the dogs turned around back to Ivanoff. He ran to Seppala, rapidly explaining the change of plan. Seppala would now transport the serum across the Norton Sound to a roadhouse in Golovin, where Charlie Olson would await him.

Elyse Wild 19:12

With the serum in hand, Seppala turned the dogs back toward the perilous Norton Sound. While they had made it across earlier in the day, the sun was now setting. Complete and total dark would swallow them. Seppala would be blind and totally dependent on Togo.

According to interviews with Seppala, at one point during that dark journey across the sound, he commanded Togo to turn to prevent a crack in the ice from forming. But Togo turned and then abruptly stopped. Seppala, who hadn't commanded him to halt, went to the front of the sled to see what had caused him to stop, and before him was a surging channel of freezing water which he couldn't see from his position in the back of the sled. He later credited Togo with saving his life and that of his dog teammates.

Later on, Seppala and the team became stuck on a floating sheet of ice that was too far from land to jump across. He disconnected Togo from the rest of the team and, in desperation, tied one end of the line to his harness, anchoring the other in the ice. He instructed the dog to swim the short distance to land and pull the ice sheet forward. When Togo made it to the other side, the line snapped, but he acted quickly, taking it in his mouth and spinning around to secure the line in his harness and pull them to safety.

Hours later, Seppala and Togo emerged from the sound at Isaac's Point Roadhouse. The dogs and their master ate a well-earned meal and both curled by a warm stove to rest for the night. The serum was intact and one day closer to Nome.

The next day, Seppala and Togo faced blizzard conditions as they set off across Norton Bay. The team stayed within a few hundred feet of the shore as the ice popped and cracked and groaned, water suddenly shooting up from the splitting ice. The team climbed a series of ridges up 1,200 feet to the summit of Little McKinley. The leg was the most challenging of the route, with steep inclines and sharp declines offering little reprieve. Over eight miles, bringing the total climb to around 5,000 feet, Seppala, Togo, and the other dogs had put 260 miles behind them in just four days with little rest. At times stumbling with exhaustion, the team persisted.

Thirteen hours after they left the roadhouse at Isaac's Point, Seppala and Togo arrived in Golovin to hand the serum off to Charlie Olson. Seppala and Togo had led their team across the most challenging, deadly sections of the great serum run. Now it was up to the remaining teams to bring the serum the rest of the way. Just 78 miles left.

The people of Nome didn't know what would arrive first: the serum or certain death. The former Gold Rush town was eerily still with quarantine as a blizzard pummeled it. They now had 28 cases of diphtheria. Even if the dogs arrived on time, the serum was only enough to treat 30 people.

Welch had to make a call. If the mushers pushed through the storm, it may result in the serum being exposed to the frigid temperatures for too long, rendering it useless. Welch and the people of Nome didn't know if the serum had reached Seppala. The doctor convened the health board, and the group made the difficult decision to temporarily call off the relay, prioritizing the serum arriving intact.

Gunnar Kaasen would be the run's second-to-last musher. He would traverse the route from Solomon to Port Safety, where he would hand the serum to Ed Rohn. Welch called the Port Safety Roadhouse to tell Rohn that the relay would be delayed until the storm passed. Rohn unhooked his dogs and settled in to sleep for the night. But what he didn't know is that the message never reached Kaasen, who would be expecting to hand the serum off to him for the very last leg of its journey.

Kaasen, who worked at Seppala's kennels, had 13 dogs harnessed with Balto, a three-year-old Husky with a dark, inky coat and white fur blossoming across his chest in the lead position.

At 7 p.m. on February 1, at a roadhouse in Bluff, Alaska, Kaasen heard Olson's voice through the howling wind. He ran outside to see Olson and his dogs showing signs of their endeavor. Traveling 25 miles in the bitter and relentless blizzard had left the dogs with near-frozen legs. At one point, Olson had stopped to outfit the dogs in rabbit fur coverings, exposing his hands to the 70-below temperatures, quickly freezing his fingers and rendering them useless. Olson encouraged Kaasen to wait out the storm, and he did for a little while.

By 10 p.m., the storm was fierce, with hurricane-force winds showing no signs of stopping. It was now or never. After hooking up the dogs to the gang line and packaging the serum into the sled, Kaasen left into the dark night bound for Port Safety.

Five miles in, the dogs became stuck in a snow drift formed by the screaming winds that pulled snow across the trail. As Kaasen attempted to clear a path for the dogs, he sank into the snow up to his chest. There was no way through. He would have to turn the team around and maneuver around the ridge. Balto, however inexperienced, pulled it off.

After a grueling run, Kaasen and Balto reached Port Safety, expecting to see Rohn waiting with his dogs ready to take the serum on the last leg. But Rohn was in the roadhouse sleeping, having assumed that Kaasen would be waiting out the storm as he had been told. So Kaasen continued on.

On February 2, 1925, after more than 600 miles in 127 and a half hours, the serum arrived in Nome. Not a single ampule was broken. Later that day, the serum was thawed and ready for use. Welch treated all 28 cases of diphtheria with the antitoxin, and not a single death followed.

Togo and the rest of the dogs who heroically raced through the Alaska wilderness to deliver the life-saving serum became overnight sensations. They received letters of commendation from then-President Calvin Coolidge, and headlines about the "Race of Mercy" splashed across newspapers all over the country. Letters from children and adults alike poured into Alaska, praising the dogs who had saved Nome.

Seppala and his dogs continued to compete in sled dog races. In 1927, he started a Siberian Husky dog kennel in Poland Springs, Maine. It was there that Togo retired at the age of 13. Togo died in 1929 at age 16, with Seppala by his side. Togo's death was featured on the front page of the New York Sun Times, and his eulogy was published in newspapers across the nation.

As for Seppala, he lived to be 89. Even in his old age, he kept Togo close to his heart. "While my trail has been rough at times," he wrote in his diary at age 81, "the end of the course seems pretty smooth, with downhill going and a warm roadhouse in sight. And when I come to the end of the trail, I feel that, along with my mighty friend Togo, will be waiting and I know that everything will be all right."

Transcribed by https://otter.ai