Sled dog racing Dog Derby mushers were international celebrities to such degree that one photogenic female musher named Lydia Hutchinson was tapped by a producer to star in his movie. She may have been on her way to being a movie star when she died of pneumonia in 1930. The American Dog Derby popularized dogsled racing in the 1920s and other dogsled races were organized in towns and cities across North America and Northern Europe in its wake. The most famous long-distance race is the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. Also known as the "Last Great Race on Earth", the Iditarod is roughly
Sled dog of the Yukon River. Mail delivery by dog sled came to an end in 1963 when the last mail carrier to use a dog sled, Chester Noongwook of Savoonga, retired. He was honored by the US Postal Service in a ceremony on St. Lawrence Island in the Bering Sea. Airplanes took over Alaskan mail delivery in the 1920s and 1930s. In 1924, Carl Ben Eielson flew the first Alaskan airmail delivery. Dogsleds were used to patrol western Alaska during World War II. Highways and trucking in the 40s and 50s, and the snowmobile in the 50s and 60s, contributed to