LEONHARD SEPPALA was a Norwegian immigrant who came to Nome, Alaska, in the year 1900 as a participant in the Gold Rush. There he learned to drive a dog team using typical heavyweight mongrels of that era (his first two sleddogs, named "Nigger" and "Jack," weighed 120 and 100 pounds respectively). While Seppala was in Alaska the sport of dogsled racing was developed in the Nome goldfields as a winter recreation; in 1908 the first All-Alaska Sweepstakes race was run.
DOGS BROUGHT TO NOME from eastern Siberia by the Russian fur trader William Goosak almost won an upset victory at the second Nome Sweepstakes race in 1909. They had been laughed at and given 100-to-1 odds due to their size, which was only half that of typical Alaskan sleddogs of the day. The following summer a shipload of seventy Siberian dogs bought at the Siberian trading village of Markovo on the Anadyr River were imported by a wealthy young Scot, Charles "Fox" Maule Ramsay, second son of the Earl of Dalhousie. The Ramsay import dogs, from which three racing teams were fielded, dominated the 1910 third All-Alaska Sweepstakes, placing first, second and fourth.
IN 1913 SEPPALA'S EMPLOYER Jafet Lindeberg, a mining company
operator, entrusted Seppala with the raising and training of
a group of Siberian females and puppies, about fifteen dogs
in all. "Sepp" entered the 1914 Sweepstakes with this team
but failed to finish the race after getting caught in a
blizzard and nearly going over a two-hundred-foot precipice
along the Bering Sea coastline.
The following year Seppala's
Siberian team won the Nome Sweepstakes. Seppala dominated
Alaska's major race thereafter, winning consistently with
his Siberian sleddogs until the race was discontinued during
the First World War. Seppala continued to import, breed, and
train Siberian sleddogs, becoming a legend in his own time.
Those who raced unsuccessfully against him claimed he had
hypnotic powers of control over his dogs, so unbelievable
was the performance of the Siberian dog teams he
drove.
IN 1925 THE CITY OF NOME was threatened by a midwinter diphtheria epidemic. Seppala became the crucial figure in the delivery by dogsled of a supply of antiserum via an otherwise impassable route between Nenana and the stricken city. Seppala set out from Nome, met the driver carrying the serum from Nenana more than halfway, and returned immediately by night across Norton Sound, traveling 340 miles over treacherous sea ice and through blizzard conditions to bring the serum back. (Other relay teams involved in the delivery included that of Gunnar Kaasen who made the final leg with cull dogs of Seppala's that he had left behind; none of the other teams made more than 53 miles of travel at most.)
THE FOLLOWING YEAR, on the strength of publicity consequent to the Nome Serum Run, Seppala embarked on a tour of the "Lower 48" with 44 dogs and an Inuit handler. His tour finished in the State of Maine in 1927 with a challenge race in Poland Spring against Arthur Walden, breeder of Chinook dogs and author of A Dog-Puncher on the Yukon. Seppala won the race, and afterward started the first historic Seppala Kennels in Poland Spring in partnership with a former driver of Chinooks, Mrs. Elizabeth Ricker.
Seppala leader Bonzo
Seppala's exploits and the breeding from the Poland Spring
kennel gave a powerful boost to the early days of sleddog sport
in New England. The infant Siberian Husky breed, established in the
USA in 1930, could hardly have gone anywhere without the
Poland Spring dogs and the sleddogs of Wheeler, Shearer and
the Belfords that were bred from them.
Several of the dogs Sepp
brought to Maine, along with others imported by him from Siberia
or bred by the Seppala/Ricker partnership in Poland Spring,
were turned over in 1931 to Harry R. Wheeler of St. Jovite
Station, Quebec, founding the second historic Seppala
Kennels which operated until 1950. They became the
foundation of the Seppala Strain that was finally registered
by the Canadian Kennel Club in Canada in 1939 as the
"Siberian Huskie." Seppala's direct involvement with the
breed that now bears his name was over, but his Seppala
sleddogs, descendants of original Siberian sleddogs from
Chukotka, Kamchatka and the Kolyma River basin, had been
placed by him on a path that would ultimately lead to the
birth of the Seppala Siberian Sleddog breed in the 1990s.
THE SEPPALA SIBERIAN SLEDDOG BREED now stands as an enduring memorial and tribute to the name and memory of Leonhard Seppala, Alaskan dog driver.
Also see LeonhardSeppala.Com, the premier online resource site for information about the legendary dog driver from Norway.
