In the early 1920's, settlers came to Alaska looking for gold. They traveled by boat to the coastal

towns of Seward and Knik, and from there by land into the gold fields. The trail they used to travel inland

is known today as the Iditarod Trail, one of the National Historic Trails designated by the Congress of the

United States. The Iditarod Trail quickly became a major thoroughfare in Alaska, as the mail and supplies

were carried across this trail. People also used it to get from place to place, including the priests,

ministers, and judges who had to travel between villages. In the winter, the settlers’ only means of travel

down this trail was via dog sled.

Once the gold rush ended, many gold-seekers went back to where they had come from, and

suddenly there was much less travel on the Iditarod Trail. The introduction of the airplane in the late

1920’s meant dog teams were no longer the standard mode of transportation, and of course with the

airplane carrying the mail and supplies, there was less need for land travel in general. The final blow to

the use of the dog teams was the appearance of snowmobiles.

By the mid 1960's, most Alaskans didn’t even know the Iditarod Trail existed, or that dog teams

had played a crucial role in Alaska’s early settlements. Dorothy G. Page, a self-made historian,

recognized how few people knew about the former use of sled dogs as working animals and about the

Iditarod Trail’s role in Alaska’s colorful history. To raise awareness about this aspect of Alaskan history,

she came up with the idea to have a dog sled race over the Iditarod Trail. She presented her idea to an

enthusiastic musher, as dog sled drivers are known, named Joe Redington, Sr. Soon the Pages and the

Redingtons were working together to promote the idea of the Iditarod race.

Many people worked to make the first Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race a reality in 1967. The Aurora

Dog Mushers Club, along with men from the Adult Camp in Sutton, helped clear years of overgrowth from

the first nine miles of the Iditarod Trail. To raise interest in the race, a $25,000 purse was offered, with

Joe Redington donating one acre of his land to help raise the funds. The short race, approximately 27

miles long, was put on a second time in 1969.

After these first two successful races, the goal was to lengthen the race a little further to the ghost

town of Iditarod by 1973. However in 1972, the U.S. Army reopened the trail as a winter exercise, and so

in 1973, the decision was made to take the race all the way to the city of Nome—over 1,000 miles. There

were many who believed it could not be done and that it was crazy to send a bunch of mushers out into

the vast, uninhabited Alaskan wilderness. But the race went! 22 mushers finished that year, and to date

over 400 people have completed it.