March 23, 2020

Last week, on March 18, the Norwegian musher (sled driver) Thomas Waerner won the annual Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in Alaska. The Iditarod is the world’s most famous sled dog race. The roughly 1,000-mile (1,600-kilometer) race starts on the first Saturday of March in Anchorage and ends in Nome. Waerner won his first Iditarod in just his second try. His only previous race had been a 17th place finish in 2015. The Iditarod, which began this year on March 7, was one of the few sporting events not cancelled or otherwise effected by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

The Iditarod is a famous sled dog race held every March in Alaska. Teams of sled dogs race between Anchorage and Nome. Credit: © Shutterstock

Waerner’s winning race time was 9 days, 10 hours, 37 minutes, and 47 seconds—nearly 6 hours ahead of the second-place finisher, Alaska’s Mitch Seavey, a three-time Iditarod champion (2004, 2013, and 2017). Jessie Royer of Fairbanks, Alaska, finished third for the second-straight year, bringing her dog team in an hour and half after Seavey. Of the 57 mushers who began the race, 40 were able to complete the grueling course.

The Iditarod crosses the Alaska and Kuskokwim mountain ranges, heading northwest across the state and then north along the Bering Sea coast to Nome. The race follows a northern route in even years and a southern route in odd-numbered years. The Iditarod requires enormous endurance, both from the musher and the dogs. The race follows icy, snowy trails and typically takes about 10 to 17 days. Mushers and their dogs may train all year for the race.

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The Iditarod race begins in Anchorage, Alaska. It crosses the Alaska and Kuskowim mountain ranges, heading northwest across the state and then north along the Bering Sea coast to the finish line in Nome. The race follows a northern route in even years and a southern route in odd-numbered years. Credit: WORLD BOOK map

Each musher begins the race with between 12 and 16 dogs. At least 5 dogs must finish. (Waerner and Seavey both finished with 10 dogs running, and Royer finished with 12.) The dogs, usually Siberian or Alaskan huskies, are selected for speed, endurance, and courage. The sled is extremely light, but it must be strong enough to carry the weight of the musher, equipment and provisions for the race, and sick or exhausted dogs.

The current Iditarod format originated in 1973, developing from shorter sled dog races first held in 1967 and 1969. It is held on the Iditarod Trail, a dog sled mail route first used in 1910. The race also commemorates an emergency rescue mission by dog sled to get medical supplies to Nome during a diphtheria outbreak in 1925. Balto, the lead sled dog in the final leg of that mission, became a popular canine celebrity.

March 18, 2019

Last week, on March 13, the American musher (sled driver) Peter Kaiser won the annual Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in Alaska. The Iditarod is the world’s most famous sled dog race. The 1,100-mile (1,770-kilometer) race starts on the first Saturday of March in Anchorage and ends in Nome. Kaiser, who is from Alaska, is the first musher of Yup’ik descent to win the race. The Yup’ik are an Inuit people native to the region.

The Iditarod is a famous sled dog race held every March in Alaska. Teams of sled dogs race from Anchorage to Nome. Credit: © Shutterstock

Kaiser’s winning race time was 9 days, 12 hours, 39 minutes, and 6 seconds—just 12 minutes ahead of the defending champion, Joar Leifseth Ulsom of Norway. (The third-place musher, Jessie Royer of Fairbanks, Alaska, brought her dog team in nearly six hours after Leifseth Ulsom, a more common time differential for such a long endurance race.) It was the first Iditarod win for Kaiser, who has raced every year since 2010.

The Iditarod crosses the Alaska and Kuskokwim mountain ranges, heading northwest across the state and then north along the Bering Sea coast to Nome. The race follows a northern route in even years and a southern route in odd-numbered years. The Iditarod requires enormous endurance, both from the musher and the dogs. The race follows icy, snowy trails and typically takes about 10 to 17 days. Mushers and their dogs may train all year for the race. Both men and women compete.

Click to view larger image
The Iditarod is a famous sled dog race held every March in Alaska. Teams of sled dogs race from Anchorage to Nome on the Iditarod Trail, a dog sled mail route first used in 1910. Credit: WORLD BOOK map

At least 12 dogs and no more than 16 dogs must start the race. At least 5 dogs must finish. The dogs, usually Siberian or Alaskan huskies, are selected for speed, endurance, and courage. The sled is extremely light, but it must be strong enough to carry the weight of the musher, equipment and provisions for the race, and sick or exhausted dogs.

The current Iditarod format originated in 1973, developing from shorter sled dog races first held in 1967 and 1969. It is held on the Iditarod Trail, a dog sled mail route first used in 1910. The race also commemorates an emergency rescue mission by dog sled to get medical supplies to Nome during a diphtheria outbreak in 1925. Balto, the lead sled dog in the final leg of that mission, became a popular canine celebrity.

January 19, 2018

How and when did people first reach the Americas? It is generally agreed that humans arrived in the Western Hemisphere at least 15,000 years ago. They got there by crossing Beringia, a land bridge that once connected Asia and North America. (Beringia takes its name from the Bering Strait and Sea that now cover the former land bridge.) The details of this human movement have long been a mystery. Recently, however, ancient DNA found in Alaska has helped scientists learn about the timing and circumstances of the migration.

University of Alaska Fairbanks professors Ben Potter and Josh Reuther excavate the remains of two ancient infants along the Upward Sun River in Alaska. Credit: © Ben Potter, University of Alaska Fairbanks

In 2011, a team of archaeologists discovered the bones of two female infants along the Upward Sun River in Alaska. One was an infant who died a few months after birth. The other was a newborn or late-term fetus. The archaeologists determined that the infants died about 11,500 years ago. After the Upward Sun River infants died, their bodies were laid atop a bed of red ocher surrounded by antler points. Only small fragments of DNA from the younger infant were available to study. However, scientists were able to reconstruct the genome (the entire set of chemical instructions that control heredity in a human being) of the older infant.

This scientific illustration shows the ancient Upward Sun River camp in what is now interior Alaska. Credit: © Eric S. Carlson/Ben A. Potter/University of Alaska Fairbanks

Previous studies have shown that Native Americans are descended from one of two ancestral groups. The northern group produced most of the indigenous (native) people of Alaska and upper Canada. A southern group produced most of the indigenous people of the lower United States, Mexico, and Central and South America. The genome of the older infant revealed that she came from a very early group of Native Americans who were the ancestors of both the northern and southern indigenous groups. These original people are now known as the Ancient Beringians. The scientists’ work represents the first reconstruction of an Ancient Beringian genome. It provides key evidence to the theory that all living Native Americans are originally descended from the same group of people.

Despite the fact that the Upward Sun River infants shared a grave and seem to have been from the same community, their DNA shows a great deal of variation. This variation supports what is known as the Beringian Standstill hypothesis, which suggests that ancient Siberians entered Beringia and stayed there for thousands of years before they entered the Americas. This hypothesis proposes that ice age glaciers blocked their migration until about 15,000 years ago, when the glaciers began to melt and retreat. According to the Standstill hypothesis, much genetic mixing would have occurred in Beringia before movement into the Americas began. This helps explain why the two infants’ DNA shows such variation.

The remains of the Upward Sun River infants have shed much light on the migration of the Ancient Beringians. However, more ancient DNA must be gathered and studied before the Beringian Standstill hypothesis can be proven true. There are still many details about the populating of the Americas that remain a mystery.

March 30, 2017

Today, March 30, marks 150 years since the United States purchased Alaska from Russia. On March 30, 1867, U.S. Secretary of State William H. Seward signed the Treaty of Cession of Russian America to the United States. The $7.2-million deal (equal to about $112 million today) turned out to be an incredible bargain, but at the time, many Americans opposed the purchase. People ridiculed spending millions of dollars on a largely unknown and frozen wilderness. Critics of the deal called Alaska Seward’s Icebox—or Seward’s Folly, Icebergia, or [then-President] Andrew Johnson’s polar bear garden.

Alaska’s vast wilderness and natural resources went unappreciated in 1867, when skeptical Americans dubbed it Seward’s Icebox. Credit: © David Muench/Stone from Getty Images

Russia had been involved in the Alaska region since the 1600’s. By the late 1700’s, Russian traders and hunters had established settlements in the area, and by the 1820’s, Alaska was recognized as Russian territory. Russian development stalled, however, and after the Crimean War (1853-1856), a weakened Russia was eager to sell Alaska. Russia asked the United States to buy the territory in 1859, but negotiations failed with the threat and then onset of the American Civil War (1861-1865).

U.S. Secretary of State William H. Seward died in 1872, long before his “folly” of the Alaska purchase proved to be a very profitable and worthwhile investment. Credit: © Everett Historical/Shutterstock

Negotiations for the purchase of Alaska resumed after the war, and Russia and the United States reached an agreement in 1867. With money badly needed for Reconstruction, however, few people saw the wisdom in the Alaska purchase. The vast acreage acquired—Alaska increased the size of the United States by nearly 20 percent—failed to impress some people, but Congress approved the purchase in July 1867. Alaska formally came under American control on Oct. 18, 1867.

A United States Treasury warrant for $7,200,000, shown here, was used to purchase Alaska from Russia in 1867. The price came to about 2 cents per acre (5 cents per hectare). Credit: National Archives

With much of the western United States still unexplored or undeveloped, Alaska was not an immediate priority. But the area’s rich natural resources—including fish, gold, and timber—brought people steadily north to Alaska. In 1884, Alaska finally got its first formal laws and government, and in the 1890’s, rich gold strikes quickly increased the territory’s population—and its prestige. Alaska finally shed its image of a frozen wasteland and instead became a new land of opportunity.

In the 1900’s, the discovery of petroleum deposits brought still more people and development to Alaska. During World War II (1939-1945), Alaska proved its value still further as a strategic base of operations. In 1946, Alaskans voted for statehood and began crafting a state constitution. On Jan. 3, 1959, Seward’s Icebox entered the Union as the 49^th state. In 1967, on the 100^th anniversary of the Alaska purchase, the state adopted the motto, “The Last Frontier.”

December 21, 2016

Barrow, Alaska, the northernmost community in the United States, will soon be renamed Utqiagvik (UHT kah giv ihk), Alaska, following a recent municipal election where voters narrowly approved the name change ordinance. The change returns the name of the town to its original Iñupiat name. The Iñupiat, an indigenous (native) North Alaska Inuit people, make up the majority of the town’s 4,300 people. Barrow lies about 320 miles (515 kilometers) north of the Arctic Circle on the Chukchi Sea in the Arctic Ocean. Barrow is just south of Point Barrow, Alaska’s northernmost point, on the state’s North Slope.

Whale bones and a sign welcome people to Barrow, Alaska, soon to be renamed Utqiagvik. It is the northernmost community in the United States. Credit: © Michelle Holihan, Shutterstock

The name change was celebrated by local Iñupiat, who worry that their native language and traditional culture might soon be lost. Scholars at the Alaska Native Language Center at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks estimate that only about 3,000 Iñupiat still speak their native language. Iñupiat is related to other Inuit languages spoken in the vast circumpolar region stretching from Alaska across Canada to Greenland.

People have lived in remote Utqiagvik for over 1,000 years. Archaeologists have found evidence of human activity in the area as early as A.D. 500. Native Iñupiat people called the location Utqiagvik (high place for viewing) because of a high bluff overlooking the sea. The name may also refer to a location where wild roots could be collected for food in the summer. A British mapping expedition visited the area in 1826. The expedition members named nearby Point Barrow for Sir John Barrow, the second secretary of the British Admiralty and a sponsor of the expedition. The village was known primarily by various Iñupiat names until 1901, when the U.S. Post Office Department made the name Barrow official.

In the municipal elections held on October 10, 2016, Barrow residents voted to restore its indigenous name. Fittingly, the election was held on Columbus Day, a federal holiday that honors the first voyage of Christopher Columbus to America in 1492. It is not an official state holiday in Alaska, where Governor Bill Walker signed a proclamation declaring the date shall also be recognized as Indigenous Peoples Day. In the proclamation, Walker noted that more than 16 percent of Alaska’s population is indigenous, the highest percentage of any U.S. state. Barrow’s name change is not a 100-percent done deal, however. City officials must first coordinate with Alaska state offices to make the necessary changes on government documents, maps, signs, and websites. There are also legal challenges to the name change in Alaska courts. A year ago in 2015, Alaska’s Mount McKinley, the highest peak in North America, reverted to its indigenous Athabascan name, Denali.

September 4, 2015

Last week, U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell made it official: Mount McKinley, the highest mountain in North America, the top of the continent, and the pride of central Alaska, had been officially renamed Denali—the name native Alaskans have called the peak for centuries. Denali means The Great One or The High One in the language of Alaska’s Athabaskan Indians. President Barack Obama trumpeted the long-awaited decision during this week’s visit to Alaska to raise alarms about the effects of climate change.

Mt Denali (formerly McKinley), Denali National Park, Alaska Credit: © wynnter/iStockphoto

Dissenters—generally descendants and fans of the 25th president, Ohioan William McKinley, and supporters of the long-unfashionable gold standard—bayed a chorus of “say it ain’t so’s.” All in all, however, the move was relatively noncontroversial. Republicans and Democrats in Alaska, heeding the wishes of the state’s American Indian population, had long pressed for the name change. The peak stands within Denali National Park, which was named Mount McKinley National Park from 1917 until 1980.

The peak was first dubbed McKinley in 1896 after a gold prospector stumbled out of the central Alaskan wilderness and heard that the Ohioan had won the Republican presidential nomination. McKinley had never been to Alaska and wasn’t much of a traveler—Alaskans noted that he remained in Canton, Ohio, during the presidential campaign and addressed visiting delegations from his front porch. But he was a supporter of the gold standard, a system in which the dollar was defined as worth a certain quantity of gold. His opponent, the windy Nebraskan free-silver champion William Jennings Bryan, famously told his yellow-metaled foes that they “shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.” Promising not to crucify anyone, McKinley won the election, kept his gold standard, and got a very large and remote mountain named for him.

Days after Denali’s name was restored, it got smaller. Scientists used Global Positioning System (GPS) data to establish its height as 20,310 feet (6,190 meters). In the 1950’s, measurements had placed the peak at 20,320 feet (6,194 meters). Canada’s Mount Logan, at 19,551 feet (5,959 meters), is the second highest peak in North America.

March 12, 2014

Dallas Seavey won Alaska’s famous sled dog race, the Iditarod, yesterday, finishing the 1,000-mile (1,609-kilometer) trek from Anchorage to Nome in a record-breaking 8 days, 13 hours, 4 minutes, and 19 seconds. Rival Aliy Zirkle finished in second place, 2 minutes and 22 seconds behind Seavey. Two-time champion Mitch Seavey, Dallas’s father, came in third. This year’s championship is Dallas Seavey’s second; he was the youngest champion in Iditarod history when he won the race for the first time in 2012.

“This year’s race has been dominated by rough trail, dramatic injuries, and tough weather. There are still more than 50 dog teams spread out along the west coast of Alaska,” reported Emily Schwing of NPR member station KUAC.

The Iditarod is a famous sled dog race held every March in Alaska. Teams of sled dogs race between Anchorage and Nome. (AP/Wide World)

The current Iditarod race, which originated in 1973, is held on the Iditarod Trail, a dog sled mail route first used in 1910. The race commemorates an emergency rescue mission by dog sled to get medical supplies to Nome during a diphtheria outbreak in 1925.

Additional World Book articles:

• Sled
• Iditarod: Celebrating the Dog Days of Winter (a special report)

January 3, 2013

The Federal Aviation Administration instituted a temporary flight restriction yesterday around a Royal Dutch Shell oil drilling rig, the Kulluk, that ran aground on December 31 on an island south of Kodiak, Alaska. The U.S. Coast Guard is maintaining a safety zone of 1 nautical mile (1.85 kilometers) around the structure as well.

The 266-foot (81-meter) mobile offshore rig, which is not self-propelled, broke free of towlines on December 26 while being towed to Seattle for maintenance after seasonal drilling off the coast of Arctic Alaska. All 17 workers aboard the vessel were evacuated by Coast Guard helicopters on December 29. After days of efforts trying to guide the Kulluk through 40-foot (12-meter) swells in the Gulf of Alaska, the crew aboard the towing vessel was forced to disconnect the rig.

The beached Kulluk contains up to 150,000 gallons (567,800 liters) of low-sulfur diesel fuel and about 12,000 gallons (45,425 liters) of combined lubricant oil and hydraulic fluid, which Coast Guard officials are concerned may begin to discharge into the sea. Following a Coast Guard reconnaissance flight on January 1, Shell Alaska Operations Manager Sean Churchfield reported, “the Kulluk is upright and rocking with a slow, but stable motion.”

An offshore drilling rig can drill to a petroleum reservoir deep beneath the ocean floor. (Pride International)

Environmental groups that have opposed the opening of U.S. Arctic waters to offshore oil drilling are citing the Kulluk as an example of what can go wrong when drilling is done in the harsh weather conditions of Arctic Alaska. In a statement to the media, Lois N. Epstein, Arctic program director for the Wilderness Society stated, “Shell’s costly drilling experiment in the Arctic Ocean needs to be stopped by the federal government or by Shell itself given the unacceptably high risks it poses to both humans and the environment.”

In a January 1 press release, Shell officials noted, “We have already begun a review–working with our marine experts, partners and suppliers–of how this sequence of events . . . led to this incident.  We intend to use lessons from that review to strengthen our maritime fleet operations, globally.”

Additional World Book articles:

• Environmental pollution
• Exxon Valdez oil spill
• Gulf oil spill of 2010
• Oil spill
• The Ocean’s Troubled Waters (a special report)

October 1, 2012

The United States and Russia have agreed to preserve the Ice Age heritage of Beringia, an area that includes parts of northeastern Asia and northwestern North America and a land bridge that once connected them. During a recent visit to Russia, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton agreed with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to establish the Transboundary Area of Shared Beringian Heritage, a specially protected region that includes the Bering Strait and adjacent areas of Siberia and Alaska. Known as Beringia, this area is home to Inuit and Yuit peoples, who have a common language and traditions but are separated by international borders. A wide range of animals, including polar bears, whales, seals, and walruses, also live there.

At the Bering Strait in the northern Pacific Ocean, the United States and Russia are separated by about 50 miles (80 kilometers) of open water. But during the most recent ice age, huge glaciers covered much of the northern half of Earth and sea level was much lower than it is today. As a result, much of the Bering Strait was a vast stretch of dry land forming a bridge about 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) wide at its greatest extent that connected what are now Siberia and Alaska. Most scientists think the first American Indians, following the animals that they hunted, wandered across this harsh environment into North America at least 15,000 years ago. By 12,500 years ago, Indians had spread throughout the New World and were living from the Arctic in the north all the way to what became known as the Strait of Magellan in southern South America.

The Bering Stait is a narrow waterway that connects the Bering and Chukchi seas. (World Book map)

The Transboundary Area of Shared Beringian Heritage formally recognizes the symbolic links between the people and governments of Asia and North America. The new heritage area will aid conservation efforts in this natural ecosystem and promote international cooperation on scientific research and monitoring the enviroment. The new area will formally link two national parks in Alaska–the Bering Land Bridge Natural Preserve and the Cape Krusenstern National Monument–with the newly designated Beringia National Park in Chukhotka, Russia. The region will cover a total of about 7.2 million acres (2.9 million hectares).

United States President George H. W. Bush and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev first announced plans to create a transnational park spanning the Bering Strait in 1990, but progress towards the creation of the park stalled. Many components of this new agreement are still being worked out, but officials hope to have a finalized agreement by the end of 2012.

Additional World Book articles:

• Bering, Vitus
• Paleo-Indians
  
• Prehistoric people
• Anthropology (1951) (a Back in Time article)
• The First Americans (a Special Report)

July 9, 2012

Marine mammal specialists are encouraged by the progress a beluga calf has made after being rescued in Alaska’s Bristol Bay. The young whale was found dehydrated and disoriented on June 18 by two Alaska fishermen, who immediately contacted the Alaska SeaLife Center in Seward for help. SeaLife biologists airlifted the calf to their research and rehabilitation center, where they began attempts to save its life.

The beluga whale is a white whale. It lives in the Arctic Ocean and can sometimes be seen off the southwestern coast of Alaska. (© Ivan Histand, Shutterstock)

The biologists estimate that the calf was two days old when it was discovered. They believe that the new-born male was separated from its mother during a windstorm off Alaska’s southwestern coast. The calf’s age makes the rescue attempt one of the first of its kind. No other wild new-born belugas have survived in captivity since record-keeping began in 1972. Marine mammal experts–who have flown in to help from the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta, the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago, and SeaWorld in San Diego–note that the calf’s immune system is insufficiently developed because it never had the chance to nurse on its mother’s milk. They are feeding the baby through a stomach tube, as well as teaching it to suckle from a bottle, and are adding supplements to the formula in hopes of developing its immune system. Since its rescue, the calf, which is 5 feet (1.5 meters) long, has gained 5 pounds (2.3 kilograms) and now weighs 115 pounds (52 kilograms).

In addition to feeding the calf, at least three human handlers are with the young whale day and night. Two caretakers in wet suits stay in the pool, where they play with the calf and teach it new swimming patterns. At present, the calf is not in an area where it can be viewed by the public. It has not been officially named, though many of the handlers have started calling it Naknek. (Naknek is the name of a village on Bristol Bay in the area where the calf was found.)

A worker at the Vancouver Aquarium in Canada pets an adult beluga whale while a young visitor watches. (© Ross Denotter, Vancouver Aquarium Marine Science Center)

If the calf survives, the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service will place it in an aquarium with a group of belugas that are most likely to accept it. Marine mammal specialists believe that it is not possible to teach a whale of this age to survive on its own in the wild.