Gunnar Kaasen - Last Leg of The Great Race of Mercy

Last Leg of The Great Race of Mercy

In 1925, an outbreak of diphtheria threatened Kaasen's adopted home, and the disease could easily spread across the northern Alaska villages of which Nome was the hub. The Inuit children in particular had no immunity to the "white man's disease". The port was frozen. No train routes or regular roads extended to the northern coast of Alaska. Bush piloting was in its infancy; the only two aircraft in the state had open-cockpits, and had never been flown in the winter. Given the choices, Governor Scott Bone authorized the transport of 300,000 units of serum in Anchorage to Nenana by train, where it was picked up by the first of twenty mushers and more than one hundred dogs who relayed the serum the remaining 674 miles (1,085 km) to Nome. Kaasen was scheduled to transport the 20 pound (9 kg) cylinder of serum along the next-to-last leg of the relay, from Bluff to Point Safety, Alaska. At Bluff, Charlie Olson passed the serum to Kaasen, who left with a team of 13 dogs, led by the husky Balto. Kaasen traveled through the night, in the middle of winds so severe that his sled flipped over and he almost lost the cylinder containing the serum. Visibility was so poor he could not always see the dogs harnessed closest to the sled.

Kaasen reached Port Safety ahead of schedule on February 2, at 2 Alaska Standard Time. Ed Rohn, the next musher in the relay was sleeping, so Kaasen pressed on the remaining 25 miles (40 km) to Nome, reaching Front Street at 5:30 . Kaasen traveled a total of 54.3 miles (87 km).

Kaasen gave the serum to Dr. Curtis Welch, the only physician in Nome, who distributed the serum. No further deaths from the disease were reported. A second batch of serum, from Seattle, Washington, arrived in Seward, Alaska, five days later, and was transported to Nome in the same fashion. Prior to 1925, the disease killed 20,000 people a year in the U.S. The worldwide publicity the event received helped spur widespread diphtheria inoculations, which greatly reduced that number.