Edgar Nollner Sr.; Last Link to Historic Dog Sled Run

Edgar Nollner Sr., the last link to a legend of the Yukon River--the 1925 dog team relay that sped an emergency supply of diphtheria serum across Alaska in bitter winter--has died at age 94.

Nollner suffered heart failure Jan. 18 in the Yukon River village of Galena, Alaska.

He was just 20 when he joined 19 other mushers and 150 dogs in what was to become a fabled adventure: transporting a 20-pound package of diphtheria antitoxin 674 miles from Nenana to Nome on what was then a winter mail route called the Iditarod Trail.

It usually took about 30 days for a single team to make the journey. But this run, made by a hardy group of mail drivers, freight haulers and trappers, took just over five days. The relay was the inspiration for the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, an annual 1,100-mile run from Anchorage to Nome that began in 1973.

The race to Nome became necessary after several cases of diphtheria, a contagious bacterial disease that was once a common killer of young children in North America, were discovered in the former gold rush town of 1,400.

A sufficient supply of serum was found by the U.S. Public Health Service at a hospital in Anchorage and quickly put on a special train north to the railhead at Nenana, near Fairbanks. The initial idea was to fly it from Fairbanks to Nome, but there were just two biplanes in Anchorage, and both had been dismantled for the winter. Even assembled, the open-cockpit planes would have been unusable in the 50-below temperatures. A relay by dog sled was the only alternative.

A day after the first musher, Wild Bill Shannon, pulled out of Nenana with the serum, the wiry Nollner harnessed his seven huskies to the front of a homemade birch sled.

Wearing a squirrel-skin parka and reindeer mukluks, he waited overnight in a cabin to begin his leg of the relay, not knowing when the dog team carrying the serum would arrive.

The frigid weather surpassed anything he had ever mushed in, Nollner said. It was 56 degrees below zero and dark when he set out. Had the situation not been so dire, he would have stayed home.

“I couldn’t see the dogs in the ice fog,” Nollner said. “I just let them go, and they followed the trail.”

Nollner’s original plan was to mush a 42-mile leg to meet his brother-in-law, Charlie Evans. But since Nollner’s younger brother George also wanted to help, Nollner cut his journey. Even so, it took his dog team three hours to advance the serum 24 miles along the frozen Yukon River.

News of the diphtheria crisis in Nome and the progress of the relay race was flashed across the United States. Newspaper headlines and front-page stories detailed the adventure.

Nollner’s leg of the journey was relatively uneventful, but the weather worsened as the relay went on, increasing the peril for the mushers and dogs. Evans took the place of his two lead dogs when they froze to death in harness. He finished his 30-mile stretch leading the team himself. Another driver suffered severe frostbite on both hands, which came close to costing him his fingers.

The longest leg of the journey was run by Leonhard Seppala, Nome’s best musher, who picked up the serum from another driver on the fourth day of the relay. Already a legend in Alaska for his success racing sled dogs, Seppala imported Siberian huskies, which were smaller than traditional Alaskan dogs but hardy pullers with tough feet and plenty of endurance. With the package of serum, he guided his team of huskies onto frozen Norton Bay, a dangerous route but the most direct. Seppala and his dogs fought through gales and blinding snow to cross the bay. Three hours after they reached shore, the ice pack blew out to sea.

Seppala was credited with completing just over 90 miles of the relay, but he also had traveled 125 miles from his home to the handoff point, crossing Norton Bay.

The final musher, Gunnar Kaasen, carried the serum 53 miles to his stricken hometown. The relay was completed in 127 hours, nearly twice as fast as the most optimistic estimates, despite the harsh conditions.

The serum, frozen on the trail, was thawed and residents were being inoculated within hours. Five people died in the diphtheria crisis, but the relay was credited with saving the lives of hundreds of others.

Most of the glory went to Kaasen. He had been scheduled to split the final leg with another driver, but that musher missed the handoff point in the treacherous weather. Kaasen arrived in Nome temporarily blinded and almost unable to stand.

He received $1,000 from the serum’s maker and later made movies and toured the nation with his dogs. Eventually, his dogs were sold to a dime-a-look museum in California before ending up in a zoo in Cleveland. A statue of his lead dog, Balto, still stands in New York’s Central Park. In 1995, Universal pictures released an animated film, “Balto,” which chronicled the adventure.

For Nollner and the others, fame was fleeting. He received $35 from the government, and the drivers received a letter of commendation from President Calvin Coolidge. Nollner resumed his life on the Yukon. Seppala, however, went to his grave a bitter man, believing that his key role in the race had been largely overlooked. He died in 1967 at 90.

In his later years, Nollner tended to minimize his participation.

“I didn’t know I was going to be famous. . . . I just wanted to help, that’s all,” he said. He usually wanted to talk about his skill at calling wild geese, his work as a Yukon River tugboat pilot, and the nights he wore out his partners on dance floors up and down the river.

Nollner, who was born Nov. 11, 1904, made his living as a trapper, fisherman, barge pilot and woodcutter. He outlived two wives and had 23 children. Family members estimate that he has about 200 grandchildren.

Even though he mushed dogs well into his 60s and was in good health into his late 80s, he turned down a chance to reenact the run on its 50th anniversary in 1975. The 20 mushers involved in the original relay never held a reunion, though the men who had known each other before kept up their ties afterward. Since the death in 1989 of Bill McCarty, who, coincidentally, was the musher ahead of Nollner on the serum relay, Nollner had been the lone survivor.

“I never thought I’d be the last one,” he said after McCarty died.