An Alaskan Nugget - the Iditarod Trail

Mention the Iditarod and you think of the 1,000 mile sled dog race from Anchorage to Nome.  So we were confused when we saw Mile 0 signs for the Iditarod in Seward, a port town about 125 south of Anchorage.  Here’s what we learned.

The natural ice-free harbor at Resurrection Bay was the beginning of a network of trails that became known as the Iditarod Trail.  Seward was created there in 1903 when construction began on the Alaska Central Railway.  The railway project went bust, and the unfinished rail beds became a system of trails.  The Alaska Road Commission improved the trails, which were named the Seward to Nome Mail Trail.  After the gold stampede to the Iditarod district in 1909, the trail became known as the Iditarod Trail.

Mushers delivered mail between the remote mining camps and the outside world.  Later dogsled trains carried gold shipments between the towns of Iditarod and Seward.  When airplanes were introduced in the 1920s, trail use declined.  

The first running of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in 1973 rekindled interest in the route.  Congress designated it a National Historic Trail in 1978.