Balto the Sled Dog - Central Park - NY NY

Central Park - New York City, New York Balto the Sled Dog

Balto stands ready to lead. He is still in harness.

In January 1925, Nome, Alaska experienced an outbreak of diphtheria. The city had a population of 1,429 people and the only antitoxin serum was in Anchorage. A train line ran 325 miles from Anchorage to Nenana, the station closest to Nome, but Nome was icebound seven months out of the year. Alaska's two open-cockpit planes were not safe to fly in the winter.

A relay of mushers and their dog-sled teams was the only way to deliver the fur-wrapped 20-pound package of serum to Nome, which was 674 miles from Nenana. The route followed the old Iditarod Trail used by mail drivers from Anchorage to Nome (now the route of the dog-sled championships). Twenty teams of over 200 dogs covered the frozen ground at six miles per hour, in blizzard 50 degrees below zero. An international audience listened via radio and read about the race in newspapers. The last musher, Gunnar Kasson, and his team lead by Balto, a black and white Alaskan malamute, raced over the frozen tundra in five days and seven hours – world record time. The arrival of the serum ended the epidemic, which had claimed five lives, was over.

Gunnar Kasson described the trip to reporters: 'I couldn't see the trail. Many times I couldn't even see my dogs, so blinding was the gale. I gave Balto, my lead dog, his head and trusted him. He never once faltered. It was Balto who led the way. The credit is his.' Balto survived the journey, and toured the United States in vaudeville acts and sideshows with the rest of the dog team. Eventually, Kasson sold the dogs to a huckster named Sam Houston who put them in his Los Angeles dime-a-look museum.

There, a sadly neglected Balto and his team Tillie, Fox, Sye, Billy, Old Moctoc and Alaska Slim were discovered by George Kimble, a Cleveland Ohio businessman. For the fee of 10 cents, visitors (men only) were allowed into the back room where the emaciated dogs were on display. (Sled dogs were treated as beasts of burden then. Only 18 of 52 dogs survived Roald Amundsen's South Pole expedition. 'You slaughter beef cattle for food. We used dogs,' Amudsen said. Amundsen had used Balto when he was training for his South Pole dash.) Kimble sent a dispatch to the Cleveland Plain Dealer describing the heroic dogs' plight. A committee of citizens raised money. Everyone contributed. Radio stations nationally picked up the plea and money from across the country came in. Sam Houston demanded and got $2,000 for the dogs. Roald Amundsen, his reputation faded because of the loss of dogs on his expedition, supported the campaign.

Balto and the dogs were moved across the country on a special American Express Railway car dubbed the 'Balto Pullman.' Cleveland had an hour-long welcoming parade with 15,000 people in attendance. The dogs wound their way through Public Square to City Hall. They were given a retirement home in the Brookside Zoo (now the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo). They loved the Cleveland winters because they were reminded of home.

By 1930, only Sye and Balto survived. On Tuesday, March 14, 1933, the veterinarian Dr. R.R. Powell injected the comatose, nearly lifeless 11-year-old Balto with a drug to hasten his final ride. Sye, age 17, died a year later. Sye was the only sled dog to sire or have a litter. Balto's body was stuffed and mounted by a staff taxidermist at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. Balto is still on display in Cleveland at the Museum of Natural History several months each year, as a reminder of his race against death.

Balto was sculpted in 1925 by Frederick George Richard Roth.

MuseumPlanet has narrated slide tours of historic sites in New York City. There are over 2,500 over monitor size photos. Each slide has audio narration and text.