History of Dog Sledding

The earliest account of dog sledding occurred around 2000 B.C. Scholars suggests that it originated in Siberia or North America, where Indian cultures used dogs to pull goods. Portions of the Iditarod Trail, located in Alaska,  was used by the Native Alaskan Eskimo peoples hundreds of years before the arrival of fur traders from Russia in the 1800s. The trail was used the most starting in the late 1880s and the mid 1920s as miners came to Alaska and began to mine for coal and gold. The Iditarod Trail is still used today for the annual Iditarod Race which commemorates dog sledding in Alaska. It specifically celebrates the use of dog sledding when the diphtheria epidemic occurred and supplies were needed to be transported around the country to save people's lives.   During this 1925 serum run to Nome, 20 mushers and about 150 sled dogs transported the antitoxin 672 miles across the state of Alaska in five and a half days.