[Dog Owner's Guide: The Iditarod (www.canismajor.com/dog/iditarod.html)] Home Topics Index Newest ... About The Iditarod Alaska's last great race Dog welfare Race opposition It is cold, oh, so cold, and snow is swirling in the fierce wind. The dogs plod on, their rhythmic panting and the steady shhhhh of the sled runners the only sound. The musher stands on the rear of the sled, his face almost completely covered against the bitter cold, his arm crooked around the handlebar so he can doze without falling off. There's a rest stop a few miles ahead at Kaltag, and the team is making good time. In only an hour or so, he can bed down the dogs, sip a cup of hot chocolate, and grab a few hours of real sleep before hitting the trail that crosses the Nulato Hills on the way to Unalakleet. Then it's less than 270 miles along Norton Sound to Nome, the end of the trail, the end of the adventure. The Iditarod began in 1967, the centennial celebration year of the purchase of Alaska from Russia, as a project of Joe Reddington Sr. and history buff Dorothy Page. Reddington wanted to revive sled dog racing and the culture it represented and Page was looking for an event to honor the mushers and the dogs who played a large part in the settlement of the state. The race was patterned after the All-Alaska Sweepstakes races held early in the century. The new race was named the Iditarod Trail Leonhard Seppala Memorial Race to pay tribute to the prospectors who boosted frontier economy by discovering and mining the gold in them thar hills and to mushers who carried diphtheria serum to Nome in 1925 to end an epidemic among the natives in that city. Seppala ran the last leg of the serum journey. Iditarod is a small town in the state's interior, taken from the Eskimo word Haiditarod, meaning a far, distant place. Gold was discovered in a creek near the town in 1908, and the great Alaska gold rush was on. | |
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