3. Dog sledding has been around for at least 9,000 years!
The earliest evidence of man using dogs to pull sleighs was found in Siberia dating back 9,000 years. For the Thule, Inuit, and Athabascan people of North America, as well as other northern native cultures, using these dogs for transportation of people and goods was a part of daily life for centuries.
4. Sled dogs played a crucial role in the Gold Rush
Miners and sled dogs at a mining claim below Hunker Creek, Yukon Territory, ca. 1898.
While sled dogs have been part of North American culture for centuries, their popularity boomed during the Gold Rush of the late 19th and early 20th century in Alaska and Northwestern Canada. Historians report that during “one of the big rushes it was said that no stray dogs could be found on the streets of Seattle, having all been rounded up and shipped to Alaska.”
One of the most important dog sled travel routes during the Gold Rush was the Iditarod Trail, a 1000-plus mile trail that had long been used by the Inupiaq and Yup’ik peoples of the Bering Straits, among others. The Iditarod Trail ran from Seward to Nome, Alaska. Travel between these two cities exploded between the 1880s and 1920s. According to the Smithsonian, by the summer of 1900, the population of this small, remote city ballooned to over 20,000 people. (To put that in perspective, Nome’s current population is roughly 3,600 people). These numbers eventually dwindled as prospectors failed to strike it rich and the onset of WWI drew young men away from the mines.
Dog sleds remained important transportation vehicles in Alaska until the advent of airplane travel. The practice languished until the late 1960s, when dog sled racing enthusiast Joe Redington Sr. joined forces with an Alaskan historical committee chairman Dorothy Page to establish the Iditarod Trail Dog Sled Race. The first Iditarod race took place in 1973.
BONUS: The Iditarod’s oldest and youngest winners have a special bond.
Dallas Seavey made history in 2012 when, at age 25, he became the youngest winner of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. Just one year later, Dallas’ father Mitch Seavey became the oldest winner of the Iditarod at age 53, and he broke his own record in 2017 when he won again at age 57.
And that’s not all the records held by this impressive father-son team. Both Dallas and Mitch have held the record for the fastest finish in Iditarod history, with Mitch currently at the top thanks to his 2017 winning time of 8 days, 3 hours, 40 minutes, and 13 seconds. Dallas and Mitch are also the first father-son team to finish 1-2 in the Iditarod, a feat they accomplished in 2015, 2016 and 2017.