All Alaska Sweepstakes

chained_bear commented on the word All Alaska Sweepstakes

"In the fall of 1907, around the wood-burning stove at the Board of Trade Saloon, Albert Fink, Scotty Allan, and a few friends established the Nome Kennel Club with the intention of organizing a dogsled race. Over the next several weeks, Fink and his colleagues devised a long-distance race like no other. The 408-mile, round-trip trek through every imaginable terrain would test the mettle, intelligence, and endurance of dog and driver. ... Officials called it the All Alaska Sweepstakes. Others called it 'reckless.' The inhabitants of Nome, however, welcomed the race with enthusiasm. They were tired of the deadly dullness of the seven-month-long winter... It took place in April 1908 and was such a success that it became an annual event until 1917, when World War I intervened, severely disrupting Alaska's economy. ...

"The All Alaska Sweepstakes transformed the isolated town. By the start of each race every April, Nome became a frenzied festival. Miners from the Seward Peninsula came down and every dog team owner dreamed of winning the thousands of dollars in prize money. (The first year the prize was $10,000.) Year after year, news of the event was covered widely across Alaska and in the states, and Nome, now 'Dog Capital of the World,' was once again in the headlines. there was no other race like it at the time--as the official race pamphlet said, it 'easily towers above all other contests of physical endurance, for both man and beast.'"

--Gay Salisbury and Laney Salisbury, The Cruelest Miles: The Heroic Story of Dogs and Men in a Race against an Epidemic (NY and London: W.W. Norton & Co., 2003), 22-23

January 24, 2017