Discovering the Epidemic

Established as a Gold Rush town in the late 1800s, Nome, Alaska was home to roughly 1,800 people in 1925.¹ Only one of them was a physician. Dr. Curtis Welch first encountered a suspected childhood diphtheria case in October of 1924, however since no one else in the child’s family was exhibiting symptoms of the highly contagious respiratory disease he dismissed it as a cold. The child died two days later, a tragedy Welch ascribed to malnutrition. On January 20th, however, he officially diagnosed a seven year old Indigenous child with diphtheria after noticing the distinctive smell of the disease. The only antitoxin serum Welch had on hand had expired five years earlier. Realizing that the child was unlikely to recover, he risked administering the expired serum. Welch did not observe any negative reaction to the antitoxin. However, his attempt at treatment was too late, and the child passed away. By this point, Welch was able to conclude that the expired serum, while not harmful, would not be effective enough to fight off an epidemic. He immediately notified the mayor of Nome and they formed an emergency Board of Health to enforce a town-wide quarantine.²

The Call for Help

Welch sent a telegram asking for help from the Public Health Service in Washington, D. C. The group was able to quickly locate 300,000 units of antitoxin in Anchorage, but they immediately ran into the issue of transportation. There were two small planes in Anchorage, however they had been disassembled for the winter. Even if they were functional, they would have likely been useless in the below freezing temperatures and 60 to 70 mile per hour winds of the Alaskan winter.³ Instead, the Board of Health and territorial Governor Scott Bone chose to transport the serum via dog sled along the Alaskan Mail Route, also called the Iditarod Trail.⁴ This route normally took 20 days for one team to complete, but this would have been far too long for Nome to wait. Instead, they decided on a relay team of mushers and their dog teams. With the help of the United States Signal Corps, which operated the Alaskan telegraph system, the Board of Health contacted 20 men who agreed to transport the antitoxin to Nome.⁵ On January 27th, the serum was delivered by train from Anchorage to Nenana. There, 674 miles away from Nome, the race began.⁶

The Great Race for Mercy

From the station at Nenana, William “Wild Bill” Shannon and his team took off towards Tolovana. The 52 miles he covered marked the first leg of the serum run. The race involved 20 men and over 150 dogs in total.⁷ These teams travelled in blizzard conditions, and one musher, Charlie Evans, later claimed that he ran through -64 degree weather during his leg of the trip.⁸ There was a great amount of diversity amongst the mushers, with many European immigrants, native born white Americans, members of Indigenous Athabascan tribes, and men of blended ancestry running on the trail. Details about individual mushers and their experiences during the serum run can be found in the map below.

The Eyes of the Nation

The diphtheria epidemic and the serum run itself became sources of national interest. Newspapers across the country, from Hawai’i to Maine, covered the efforts to save Nome. People eagerly followed the plight in Alaska, and newspaper companies attempted to reach Welch for comment. He later told the Surgeon General that he destroyed all the wires sent to him by the press, saying “I am a physician, not a press agent.”⁹ Still, the newspapers continued to allow people from every state to follow what was happening in the farthest reaches of the American territory. All of this took place in a decade that saw an uptick in interest in national news.

Leonhard Seppala and Togo

In an effort to quicken the relay, Nome’s Board of Health decided to add more mushers to the trip after it had already begun. Leonhard Seppala, a Norwegian immigrant and famed dog sled racer, had already been sent from Nome to Nulato to pick up the serum. He had no way of knowing that more teams had been added or that the serum had actually passed through Nulato already. His trip to Nulato wound up being very fortunate, however, as Henry Ivanoff’s dogs picked up the scent of reindeer only half a mile outside of Shaktoolik. The dogs refused to return to the trail, so upon seeing Seppala Ivanoff waved him down and transferred the serum to him. Seppala, whose team was led by the famous Siberian Husky Togo, headed towards Golovin in Ivanoff’s place.¹⁰.

On his way to Golovin, Seppala had to choose between travelling along the coastline of Norton Bay, adding hours to the run, or cutting 20 miles across the frozen Bay itself. The ice could crack at any time, potentially stranding him and his team on an ice drift. Worse, they could be plunged into the icy sea. Seppala, whose daughter Seigrid had contracted and recovered from diphtheria a few years earlier, decided to cut across the Bay.¹¹

Togo led Seppala’s team in a straight line across Norton Bay. All the while, the man himself listened carefully for the sound of cracking ice, though he could not be sure it was not covered by the howling wind. At one point, the strong gusts blew the sled sideways, taking the dogs with it. Seppala righted them and moved on. Finally, late in the evening, he and his dogs arrived at the shore of Norton Bay. They had successfully crossed the frozen sea. Seppala and his team stopped to rest in the shelter of his friend’s igloo overnight. A few short hours after the team came ashore, the ice of the bay they had just run across began to break. ¹²

Seppala and his team left the next morning. When they finally arrived in Golovin, they had travelled over 91 miles on the serum run.¹³ This was the longest distance covered by any individual team. While this remains the official length credited to Seppala’s team, it does not include the trip they took from Nome to Shaktoolik. In total, the dogs had actually run 268 miles within two days.¹⁴

Gunnar Kaasen and Balto

Seppala transferred the serum to Charlie Olson in Golovin, who then travelled 25 miles to Bluff. There, he handed it off to Norwegian-born musher Gunnar Kaasen and his team, led by the Siberian Husky Balto. The vsibility was so poor that Kaasen nearly directed his team to run straight through a river. He was stopped only by Balto’s refusal to move forward. Not long after they rerouted around the river, Seppala and his team came to Topkop Hill. With a 600-foot summit and no path around it, all mushers dreaded the landmark. Seppala had to get out of his sled and push it from behind while his team pulled it up the hill. During this process Kaasen completely lost sensation in his face.¹⁵

After climbing up and subsequently sledding down Topkop Hill, Kaasen and his team continued on towards Point Safety. However, while passing through Bonanza flats, the intense winds flipped over Kaasen’s sled and pulled several of his dogs with it. After righting the sled, he realized that the serum had been knocked off in the crash. In the low visibility Kaasen had to remove his mittens and search through the snow with his bare hands. Eventually, he was able to find the package and secure it to the sled once more.¹⁶

Kaasen had initially been instructed to stop at Point Safety and transfer the antitoxin to Ed Rohn, who was chosen to run it the rest of the way to Nome. When he arrived, he noticed that the lights were out in the cabin. He realized that Rohn, who was not expecting Kaasen until the next morning, had gone to sleep. Kaasen debated waking Rohn to give him the serum. After considering how long it would take Rohn to prepare his team, and recognizing the dire conditions in Nome, Kaasen decided to bring the serum the final stretch himself.¹⁷

Arrival and Aftermath

Kaasen arrived in Nome at 5:30 in the morning on February 2nd, 1925. He knocked on Welch’s front door, waking him up while his dogs finally took a break. In five and a half days, 20 men and their dogs had covered 674 miles in blizzard conditions and delivered life-saving diphtheria antitoxin to a town on the verge of an epidemic.¹⁸

When Welch opened the package he was horrified to find that the 300,000 units of antitoxin were frozen solid. After radiogramming the Public Health Service, however, he was assured that it could be thawed and used effectively. He began treating victims immediately and on February 21st the epidemic was declared over and the quarantine lifted. It had been just over a month since Welch diagnosed the first case of diphtheria.¹⁹ The serum run had been successful, and Welch and his staff were able to effectively treat the disease.

The crisis faced in Nome spurred the government into action. The Public Health Service shipped a second batch of 1,100,000 antitoxin to Seward, Alaska on the S. S. Alameda. They were taken to Nenana by train, and from there they were transported to Nome by yet another dogsled relay. Many of the mushers that participated in the first serum run likely took part in the second, however because the country’s fascination with Nome died out after Kaasen’s arrival, their names were not recorded. In addition to the new shipment of serum, the epidemic pushed the Post Office to begin planning for an effective airmail service in Alaska. ²⁰ The diphtheria epidemic and the subsequent relay race to Nome sparked fundamental changes in how Alaska was connected to the contiguous United States.

The mushers themselves were rewarded for their efforts, with each one receiving $18.66 from a public donation fund. Additionally, the Territory of Alaska paid them $25 for each day that they were on the trail. Finally, the H. K. Mulford Company, the producer of the antitoxin, sent each of the mushers a medal and sent Gunnar Kaasen an additional $1,000.²¹ However, this reward, along with Kaasen’s overall involvement in the race, proved to be controversial.

The Battle for Credit

Kaasen’s decision to bypass Ed Rohn and deliver the serum himself is still debated. He claimed that he made this choice in order to get the serum to Nome as fast as possible, however Rohn, Leonhard Seppala, and some Nome residents felt that he wanted to earn the good publicity that came with his delivery. The $1,000 he received for his efforts did not help his case.²² What may have been more damaging, however, was the movie deal he signed by the end of the month.

At a time when movies were just beginning to become popular in America, Kaasen and Balto travelled to the contiguous United States on a press tour for their film. At the end of the tour they saw the dedication of the famed Balto statue erected in Central Park. Many claim that this is evidence of Kaasen’s desire for glory, however due to his introverted nature both at home and along the press tour, some argue that the Mayor of Nome may have pressured him into accepting the deal.²³ Regardless, Kaasen’s decision to take the serum to Nome himself and the lasting debate surrounding it demonstrate the questions surrounding glory in the race.

One man who always questioned Kaasen’s decision was Leonhard Seppala. For years, he remained angry that Balto was given the credit he felt belonged to his dog, Togo. After all, Togo and his team had covered more distance than any other team that participated in the run, including their treacherous trip across Norton Bay. Seppala was particularly upset when some newspapers falsely attributed Togo’s impressive run to Balto. In his memoir, Seppala wrote that:

“I hope I shall never be the man to take away credit from any dog or driver who participated in that run. We all did our best. But when the country was roused to enthusiasm over the serum run driver, I resented the statue to Balto, for if any dog deserved a special mention it was Togo.”

Salisbury, The Cruelest Miles, 248-249.

Significance

The Failures of Technology

The Nome serum run took place during a time of great technological improvements. Lynn Dumenil’s book The Modern Temper demonstrates this, including the 64% increase in industrialization over the decade as a whole. Both the chemical and automobile industries played a role in the technological boom of the 1920s.²⁴ The former had an important impact on the serum run, particularly because the H. K. Mulford Company manufactured the diphtheria antitoxin.²⁵ However, the transportation advancements that were dispersing throughout the mainland United States at this time, for example paved roads and cars, were not yet available in the more rural areas of the country. The serum run to Nome shows that in spite of recent improvements in transportation technology, these developments were not yet able to help those outside of the increasingly urban contiguous United States.

The Success of Syndicated News

While transportation improvements proved unable to affect the Nome serum run, improvements in newspaper technology drew people from all parts of the nation into following the race to Nome. Dumenil writes that “because of developments in technology and distribution, [newspapers] increasingly consisted of syndicated news information and photographs.”²⁶ This system consisted of a single news story being written and distributed to papers across the country. Dr. Welch’s account of the diphtheria epidemic, written a week after the serum arrived, is one example of this. He wrote an article for United Press that was sent to and published by newspapers all the way from Nebraska to New Jersey. This followed weeks of news coverage detailing Nome’s struggles, as newspapers from all 48 of the recognized states at that time, plus the territories of Alaska and Hawai’i, published stories about the dog sled relay. In addition to the increase in syndicated news, this shows the uptick in national news coverage that people were consuming during the 1920s.²⁷ People in every part of the country followed the serum run, regardless of how far they were from Alaska. Overall, in spite of transportation technology’s inability to assist in the race itself, advancements in newspaper technology during the 1920s allowed Americans to track what was happening in Nome.

Citations

Bibliography

• Alger, Anna. “100 Years After the Great Serum Run, Balto’s Legacy Endures.” Cleveland Museum of Natural History. January 23, 2025. Accessed March 18, 2026. https://www.cmnh.org/learn/science-blog/2025/01/23/100-years-after-the-great-serum-run-baltos-legacy-endures.
• Associated Press. “Diphtheria Rages at Nome, Alaska.” Olean Evening Herald (Olean, NY), January 28, 1925.
• Dumenil, Lynn. The Modern Temper: American Culture and Society in the 1920s. New York: Hill and Wang. 1995.
• Salisbury, Gay and Laney Salisbury. The Cruelest Miles: The Heroic Story of Dogs and Men in a Race Against an Epidemic. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. 2003.
• Stokes, E. D. “The Race for Life.” Public Health Reports 111, no. 3. (1996): 272-275. Accessed March 18, 2026. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4598014.
• Ungermann, Kenneth A. The Race to Nome: The Story of the Heroic Alaskan Dog Teams That Rushed Diphtheria Serum to Stricken Nome in 1925. New York: Harper & Row. 1963.
• Wilson, William H. “The Serum Dash to Nome, 1925.” Alaska Journal 16 (1986): 250-259.
• Welch, Curtis. “Nome’s Solitary Physician Tells Gripping Story of Diphtheria Epidemic.” The Times (Trenton, NJ) February 8, 1925.

Suggested Resources

• Rozell, Ned. “Sled Dogs Were Lifesavers in the Serum.” Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks. Accessed March 19, 2026. https://www.gi.alaska.edu/alaska-science-forum/sled-dogs-were-lifesavers-serum-run.
• “Serum Run of 1925.” Alaska State Archives. Accessed March 19, 2026. https://archives.alaska.gov/education/serum.html. 
• “Serum Run Resources.” University of Alaska Fairbanks. Accessed March 29, 2026. https://library.uaf.edu/aprca/research-guides/serum-run.

Grace Martinez

Grace Martinez is a Ramapo college history major with a minor in museum & exhibition studies.

www.linkedin.com/in/%20grace-martinezz

To be born and raised in the United States of America but denied citizenship and the right to vote; this was the unfortunate reality for Native Americans all over the nation. Within their own communities, Indigenous Peoples were often based on chiefdoms, whether they were hereditary or through social status, which served as a type of self-government. Nonetheless, they were still barred from participating in the United States government and were not seen as citizens in the eyes of government officials. The Snyder Act, also called the Indian Citizenship Act, was put into action in 1924 and granted citizenship, and thus the right to vote, to Native Americans. The debate of whether Native Americans should be considered citizens in the eyes of the United States was still heavy in the air; so much so that the Snyder Act was left up to the states to decide if they would follow through with granting Native Americans the right to vote. While now Native Americans were recognized as citizens and taxed as such, they still could not use their voices in many states for decades after the Snyder Act was enacted. Several other laws sought out to privatize and distribute Native American reservation to white, non-Indigenous land owners for several years before the Snyder Act was passed. This became possible through the Dawes Act and later the Burke Act.

Through the Dawes Act, or General Allotment Act of 1887, the government divided Native American reservation into plots allotted for certain members of several communities. The government considered many Native Americans to be incapable of running their allotment, as well as all of the financial dealings that came along with it, and thus their land was seized and put back into the hands of the government. From there, it could be distributed and sold to private landowners who were not Ten years earlier, the Fifteenth Amendment barred the restriction of voting rights based on race. Even then, Native Americans were not included and could not yet take part in elections. Once the Snyder Act was passed, they were explicitly granted access to vote through the bill attached with a sneaky loophole; the state government had control over whether they would adopt voting rights for Native Americans. This led to many states still restricting Native Americans to vote, even though they should have had access. Their rights were never guaranteed nor protected by the government.

Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendment

The Fourteenth Amendment was added to the Constitution in 1868 and granted citizenship to all persons born within the US. Before this, the government had made it clear that Native Americans did not belong to any part of the United States government due to the fact that Native Americans had their own tribal legislation and government. Even if an individual were to leave his or her tribe to assimilate, they would most likely be unable to obtain rights as a U.S. citizen considering they were not white and not seen as equal.

The Fifteenth Amendment, however, was added to the Constitution two years later and stated that no citizen shall be denied the right to vote based on their race or skin color. Keeping in mind that the United States government did not see Native Americans as citizens, they still could not gain access to a seemingly inalienable right. It was not until many years later that an amendment would attempt to patch the division through the Snyder Act and even many years after that.

The Dawes Act and the Burke Act

Just seven years after the Fifteenth Amendment, in 1887, the government passed the General Allotment Act or the Dawes Act. This was a blatant division and destruction of Native land hidden under the guise of government aid, as control of the reservation was often taken away from the Native Americans and put into the hands of the government instead. Not only this, but the Dawes Act enabled the possibility white landowners to take control of Native American reservation instead of the intended owners. It privatized land ownership instead of being own by the tribe as a whole. This had been exacerbated in 1906 when the Burke Act passed and explicitly put the government in charge of determining the competence of Native American landowners. Once the government had determined the owner as fully able to control their own land, the land was then taxed which led to financial turmoil for many Native Americans and resulted in a mass loss of reservation. If the government deemed the owner unfit to care for their land, it was taken from them and put into other hands. This meant that Native American reservations were not always controlled by the rightful owner.

The Snyder Act

With so many amendments and bills passed with little to no change in Native American rights, the Snyder Act seemed like it would be a change headed in the right direction; and it was, for some Native Americans. The 1920s were proving to be a more progressive era than the nation had seen in the past. Social norms were changing rapidly and Americans were shifting their beliefs. As mentioned earlier, the policy varied from state to state, as the federal government left it up to the states to make the final decision. This meant that many states refused to grant voting rights to Native Americans for nearly forty years. An argument against suffrage for Native Americans was that since they still partially belonged to their tribe, then they could not be full United States citizens as their loyalty was already pledged elsewhere. It was an unfair ruling that left many Native Americans stuck between two worlds; their culture had been decimated and assimilated through colonization and the new nation responsible for this refused to see them as equals. They had little to no control of their land and, at every second, the government was seeking new loopholes to restrict them of their rights.

Protection of Native Americans

There was opposition to this discrimination; Zitkala-Ša, Marie Louise Bottineau Baldwin, and Carlos Montezuma were all Native Americans who spoke out and made significant strides for suffrage and equality. They knew of the secrecy and deceit within the Constitution and amendments so they actively worked against it to move towards a nation that accepted everyone. Zitkala-Ša formed the National Council of American Indians in 1926, just two years after the passing of the Snyder Act. She worked tirelessly for Native American voters and equality for all through several different organizations that she established. The NCAI aimed to protect Native Americans and keep their culture and history alive. She was adamant on keeping the voice of Native Americans alive and strong through voting drives, lectures, and fundraisers.

Ša, Montezuma, and Baldwin worked together, as well, through the Society for American Indians which was formed in 1911 by Montezuma. The SAI deviated from other groups for suffrage, as it encouraged assimilation and submission of land when the Dawes Act first was enacted. It also focused on ways to provide health services and education to Native Americans as well as how they can invoke change in the government.

Relation to the 1920s

The 1920s are often thought to be a time of glamor and new-age ideals; women courted and wore short skirts, businesses began to adopt leisure activities, and there was a rise in the entertainment industry. While these were all true aspects of the 1920s, these luxuries only applied to a portion of the American population. Native Americans, even with the passing of the Snyder Act, could not vote in every state. There were multiple laws in action, leading up to the Snyder Act and following it, that intentionally kept Native Americans apart from becoming US citizens. The Snyder Act seemed to be a very progressive law that would ignite change for civil rights, especially within the Native American community, however it left many open gates for states to continue to deny suffrage to them. In states where Native Americans could vote, there was always the chance of voter intimidation or suppression tactics such as voting literacy tests and turning away Native Americans at the polls.

The Native American fight for suffrage in America rose during 1924 after the Snyder Act, as they had come so close to gaining the right to vote yet it was inaccessible to many. They gained citizenship in a country they spent their entire lives in, yet they could not vote.

Bibliography

“Carlos Montezuma.” Wassaja: A Carlos Montezuma Project. http://wassaja.lib.asu.edu/people-archive/carlos-montezuma

“Fighting for a Voice: Native Americans’ Right to Vote in Arizona.” Arizona Historical Society. July 15, 2020. https://arizonahistoricalsociety.org/2020/07/15/fighting-for-a-voice-native-americans-right-to-vote-in-arizona/

“History of Federal Voting Rights Laws.” The United States Department of Justice. https://www.justice.gov/crt/history-federal-voting-rights-laws

“Indian Citizenship Act.” Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/item/today-in-history/june-02/

“Land Tenure History.” Indian Land Tenure Foundation. https://iltf.org/land-issues/history/

Maltz, Earl M., “The Fourteenth Amendment and Native American Citizenship.” University of Minnesota Law School. 2000. https://scholarship.law.umn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1299&context=concomm

“Marie Louise Bottineau Baldwin.” National Park Service. https://www.nps.gov/people/marie-louise-bottineau-baldwin.htm

“Society of American Indians.” National Historical Publications and Records Commission. https://www.archives.gov/nhprc/projects/catalog/society-of-american-indians

“Voting Rights for Native Americans.” Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/elections/right-to-vote/voting-rights-for-native-americans/“Zitkala-Ša (Red Bird/Gertrude Simmons Bonnin).” National Park Service. https://www.nps.gov/people/zitkala-sa.htm

Sarah Grider

Sarah Grider is a student of the 2021 Spring Discovering Digital History class at the Ramapo College of New Jersey. She is currently studying History and Museum & Exhibition Studies. She is an editorial assistant for the Jane Addams Papers Project.