Balto and the 1925 Race to Nome

Balto on display at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History

“Poor Balto” says an unseen child in a Youtube video taken at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.  The video shows Balto, the famous Siberian Huskie of the 1925 Race to Nome, stuffed and mounted in a display case.  His once jet black fur is now a deep russet from decades of exposure to the light.  His distinctive white socks, one longer than the other, have lost their luster.  Poor Balto, indeed.  This seems an odd fate for any dog, particularly for one as famous as Balto.  His story has been fodder for many children’s books and the highly fictionalized animated movie Balto (1995).  However, the real story is so much better.  It’s a story of tremendous courage and endurance but also unconscionable exploitation and abuse. 

The telegram that started it all. Curtis Welch sounds the alarm.

In late January 1925, a diphtheria epidemic struck the children of Nome, Alaska.  Five children had already died and 20 were diagnosed with the disease when Dr. Curtis Welch telegrammed an urgent plea for one million units of diphtheria antitoxin to health authorities around the country.  Without the antitoxin, the town could face a devastating epidemic.  The closest serum was 350,000 units located in Anchorage.  This quantity was sufficient to hold back the epidemic until a larger shipment could arrive from Seattle.  But getting antitoxin to Nome wasn’t going to be easy.  Nome was icebound and the cold weather made airplane travel too dangerous.  The only way to deliver the serum was by train to Nenana and then by dogsled to Nome.  Over five and a half days, 20 mushers and 150 sled dogs would relay the serum 674 miles across the frozen landscape.   Alaska’s legendary musher and Huskie breeder Leonhard Seppala faced the most harrowing leg of the run with his dog sled team and lead dog Togo.  They crossed the open ice of Norton Sound in gale force winds in total darkness.  Soon after reaching the far shore, the ice began to break up.  Togo gave so much of himself that he would never run again.

Gunnar Kaasen and Balto

The next night, with the storm still raging, a 42-year-old Norwegian named Gunnar Kaasen set out on the penultimate leg of the relay.  Kaasen was Seppala’s assistant who often borrowed Seppala’s dogs when he needed a team.  When asked to join the relay, Kassen assembled a team of Seppala’s dogs including Balto, a Siberian Huskie who had been raised by Seppala.   Balto had been consigned to haul freight because Seppala thought he’d never make a good lead dog.  Kaasen felt differently.  When Kaasen’s team took off with the serum, another dog was the lead.  But after only a few miles, Kaasen put the big Huskie with the mismatched socks in the lead position.  Running into the howling wind, the visibility was so low that Kaasen couldn’t see even the closest dogs of his team.  But Balto kept them on the trail.  At one point, the sled overturned, throwing the canister of serum in the snow.  Kaasen dug in the snow with his bare hands until his found the canister.   When Kaasen reached his destination ahead of schedule, the next musher was still asleep.  So Kaasen and his dogs continued on to Nome.  At 5:30 a.m. on Feb. 2nd, Kaasen and his team reached Front Street and delivered the serum to Dr. Welch.   The serum was thawed and given to the stricken children that afternoon.    There were no more deaths due to diphtheria; the epidemic had been stopped. 

But the media frenzy around Balto was just beginning.  Photographs were taken of Kaasen and Balto.  The team’s arrival  was re-enacted for a film crew that happened to be in town.  Seppela and Togo had not even made it back to Nome before the news of Kaasen and Balto’s completion of the serum run spread around the world.

Soon after the serum run, Hollywood producer Sol Lesser approached Kaasen to make a short movie of their story.  Kassen and his dogs travelled to Seattle aboard the steamer Alameda where Director Colin Campbell and his film crew were waiting.   After more photographs and interviews, they all pressed on to Mount Rainer National Park to shoot the film.  For a week, the crew filmed Kaasen and his team mushing across the slopes of Paradise Valley re-enacting the thrills and spills of the journey they had made only a month earlier.  My grandfather, Harry Perry, was the film’s cameraman.  In his unpublished autobiography, he wrote about the filming of Balto’s Race to Nome.

“We worked nearly a week to get the needed scenes; some with good weather and some in almost a blizzard. What we wanted were scenes of Kaasen's dog team driving through deep snow drifts, with wind and snow blowing wildly, travelling up and down hills of snow and through crevasses, then stopping at times from sheer exhaustion.

We photographed these scenes by panning along with the camera, on some of them. Others were made from a second dog sled and team, as they raced along beside Gunnar's team getting long and close shots as we moved along.

I also got individual shots of the lead dog, Balto, and of Gunnar, shooting them running, walking, and resting. We even dug a pit in the snow and buried a camera, all but the lens.  I cranked it by an extension from the side as the team ran right over the camera.”

After the filming of Balto’s Race to Nome, Kassen and the dogs travelled to Los Angeles by train where Balto was treated royally.  While the other dogs were kept in the studio kennel, Lesser provided Balto with his own suite at the Biltmore Hotel.  The mayor presented Balto with a key-shaped dog biscuit.  Balto posed with a pretty actress who put a wreath of flowers around his neck.  When the movie was finished a month later, Kassen and Balto attended the premiere.  Balto’s Race to Nome was released nationally to large, appreciative crowds.   Despite many recent efforts to find a copy of this movie, it appears to be lost.

"Balto the Dog" in Smith's Army Life (1928)

This is a good point to make some corrections to some common misconceptions regarding Balto.  First of all, he was not half-wolf as Balto (1995) would have you believe.  He was pure-bred Siberian Huskie.  Second, in addition to Balto’s Race to Nome (1925), IMDB lists several Mack Sennett Smith Family comedies in Balto’s filmography.  THIS IS WRONG.  The Smith family dog was a Harlequin Great Dane named Cap. In fact, the first dog to play Cap was actually named Cap.  But other dogs would play Cap in later Smith Family films including another Harlequin Great Dane named Balto.  The frame to the right shows Balto the Dog playing Cap in Smith’s Army Life (1928).  It clearly isn’t Balto of serum run fame.  The real Balto only made one movie: Balto’s Race to Nome (1925).

The Balto Statue in Central Park, NYC

Around the time of the movie premiere, Lesser sold the dogs, probably to the Loews Theatre chain. Kaasen, Balto and the dogs were booked to appear at Loews Theatres throughout the country.  For the next six months, Kaasen and nine of the dogs traveled around the country by rail making these appearances.  Huskies are bred for running free in freezing temperatures.  Now, Balto and the others had to endure hot, humid weather, cramped crates on noisy trains, frenetic crowds, and stuffy, old theaters.  During a sweltering mid-summer stop in New York City, Balto posed for sculptor Frederick Roth.  Six months later, on December 15, 1925, a statue of Balto was unveiled in Central Park with Kaasen and Balto present.  In the movie of the event, Balto seems nonplused by all the fuss.  The plaque below the statue reads: “Dedicated to the indomitable spirit of the sled dogs that relayed antitoxin six hundred miles over rough ice across treacherous waters through arctic blizzards from Nenana to the relief of stricken Nome in the Winter of 1925.  ENDURANCE FIDELITY INTELLIGENCE.”  To this day, the Balto statue is a favorite with kids whose millions of rear ends have polished Balto’s back to a bright shine.

Meanwhile, Leonhard Seppala was bitterly angry over the adulation Balto had received - especially the statue - while his lead dog Togo had received very little.  Seppala was old friends with Roald Amundsen, the famed polar explorer.  There is an unconfirmed story in Balto lore that Amundsen approached Kaasen and told him to get out of the way so Seppala and Togo could have their chance in the spotlight.   Kaasen left for Alaska the next day, abandoning the dogs that had brought him fame.  When and where (and whether or not) this meeting took place is unclear.  What is known is that both Kaasen and Amundsen were in New York City on Dec. 15 when Balto’s statue was unveiled and Kaasen was in the Seattle area ten days later without the dogs.  He returned to Nome in early 1926. Without Kaasen, there was no show.  So the Lowes promoter shipped the dogs back to Los Angeles and sold them to the highest bidder, a man named Sam Houston, sometime in early 1926.

Mary Rogers and the team during the period Sam Houston
owned them.  Balto is in the front of the sled.
Property of Lynne Bell.

Houston put the dogs on exhibit in a dime museum - a freak show - in L.A.’s seedy entertainment district. They were chained to their sled in a small, poorly-ventilated room without exercise or sufficient food and water.   The seven surviving dogs (the fate of the other five dogs that arrived in Seattle with Kaasen two years earlier is unclear) were dehydrated, malnourished and listless when a Cleveland businessman and former boxer named George Kimble came across the dime museum in February 1927.  He was stunned and appalled to find the famous dogs in such terrible condition.  Kimble contacted the Cleveland Plain Dealer asking for the newspaper’s help to raise the necessary funds to buy the dogs and bring them to Cleveland.  Houston agreed to sell the dogs for $2000 with the condition that the money be raised within ten days of the start of the fundraising or the deal was void.  On March 1, 1927, the Plain Dealer announced the campaign to buy the dogs.  Over the next 10 days, the money slowly came.  On March 8th, news of a competing deal spurred the city and, on March 10^th, the newspaper announced that $2,245 had been raised.  The dogs were saved!

Balto and team at the Cleveland Zoo, circa 1927.
(The Cleveland Press Collection, 
Michael Schwartz Library, Cleveland State University)

Balto, Fox, Alaska Slim, Billy, Sye, Old Moctoc and Tillie (the only female) arrived in Cleveland on March 16th.  They were taken to the Brookside Zoo where they were fed and pampered by the staff.  The dogs were healthy enough to pull a sled on wheels through the snowless streets of Cleveland on “Balto Day”, March 19th.  The following day, huge crowds went to the Brookside Zoo to see the seven dogs in their new enclosure.    Siberian Huskies are certainly an unusual exhibit for a zoo, but then these weren’t just any dogs.  Cleveland children loved to see the famous dogs that had saved a far-away city and had been saved themselves largely by their dimes and nickels.

As the Roaring 20’s ended and the Depression began, the dogs died one by one.  By March of 1933, only Balto and Sye remained.  Balto was partially blind and painfully arthritic when he was euthanized on March 14, 1933.  This body was stuffed and mounted by a taxidermist at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.  To keep the story of the 1925 Race to Nome alive, Balto’s mount was put on permanent display at the museum where it still can be viewed today. 

Chargot, Patricia.  The Adventures of Balto: The Untold Story of Alaska’s Famous Iditarod Sled Dog. Publication Consultants, 2006.

Balto (actor) at the Internet Movie Data Base (IMDB.com)

Balto at Wikipedia.com

Harry F. Perry with Oscar G.Estes, Jr.: 40 Years Behind a Motion Picture Camera: The Autobiography of Harry F. Perry, A.S.C. (unpublished).

Jensen, Lance.  Siberiandoghistory.com, 2012.
Walker, Brent.  Mack Sennett's Fun Factory: A History and Filmography of His Studio and His Keystone and Mack Sennett Comedies, with Biographies of Players and Personnel. McFarland, 2013.

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