Iditarod Trail in far less travel. The trail might have been forgotten except for the 1925 diphtheria outbreak in Nome. In one of the final great feats of dog sleds, twenty drivers and teams carried the life-saving serum in 127 hours. Today, the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race serves to commemorate the part the trail and its dog sleds played in the development of Alaska. The Iditarod Trail was a trail that connected a point north of Seward, Alaska, where a forerunner of the Alaska Railroad ended, through Iditarod, Alaska and then to Nome. The trail was about long. The Iditarod Trail's
Iditarod Trail named after the now-abandoned town of Iditarod, commemorates the last great gold rush in America to the Iditarod gold fields and the critical role that dogs played in the settlement and development of Alaska. It is a common myth that the race commemorates the dogsled relay known as the 1925 "Serum Run" from Nenana to Nome. The Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race was first established by Joe Redington, Sr. in the early 1973 to encourage the designation of the Iditarod Trail as a National Historic Trail, bring the dying tradition of dog sledding back to the villages of Alaska, and