There once was a trail…

It was a trail that ran nearly 2,300 miles into the wild heart of Alaska, from Seward in the south, to Nome in the north.

Named after the now-ghost-town of Iditarod, Alaska, it was a rugged and snow-covered track that was used by Gold Rush prospectors and mailmen.

As President Kennedy announced that a man was going to the moon, Alaska was still commuting via sled dogs. It wasn’t until years later that dogs were nearly completely replaced by “iron dogs”, or snowmobiles.

The original Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race was the brainchild of a woman (you go, girl) named Dorothy Page.

Dorothy was a chairman of the Wasilla-Knik Centennial Committee, which was formed in 1964 with the intention of looking into Alaska’s history for the 100th anniversary of its statehood. She proposed a 56 mile race between Knik and Big Lake to resurrect and memorialize the use of sled dogs. The race happened in 1967 and 1969 before interest dwindled.

But Joe Redington didn’t lose interest.

Joe was heavily involved in the first two races in the late 60’s and never lost hope. He worked tirelessly to not only bring back the race, but to raise interest. Eventually, Joe’s hard work paid off, and the long-distance Iditarod Race became a reality. Joe is now known as the “Father of the Iditarod”.

Joe Redington, Sr. Photo: Stock.

The year was 1973. 352 sled dogs yipped and pulled while 22 mushers fogged the cold Alaskan air with their warm breath of life. The course ran from Anchorage to Nome and covered nearly 1,000 miles, with one of the many checkpoints being in the race’s namesake – Iditarod, Alaska.

The man who won that first long-distance race was Dick Willmarth. It took him nearly three weeks to reach Nome. Now, top mushers reach the finish line in under 10 days (wow!). Musher Mitch Seavey holds the record for fastest time – in 2017 he won the race by reaching Nome in eight days. His son, Dallas, finished second that same year, crossing the finish line only two hours and 44 minutes behind his father. Dallas is also the youngest Iditarod champion, winning the race in 2012 at the age of 25. In 1985, the first woman to win the race was Libby Riddles. Her victory has since been inducted as a “Hall of Fame” moment. Libby has written three books about her Iditarod experience. The second woman to win the race, in 1986, was Susan Butcher.

Libby Riddles. Photo: Stock.

Seward, Alaska claims Mile Zero of the original Iditarod Trail, though the race begins in Willow, 80 miles north of Anchorage, the first Saturday of March each year.

The Iditarod Race has done exactly what Joe Redington always dreamed it would do – bring a part of Alaska’s history back to life. Sled dog rides are now a large portion of tourist attractions throughout the state, and while controversy shrouds it due to animal rights concerns, the history behind it shines brightly.

Want to try your hand at mushing during your visit to Seward? Iditarod champion Mitch Seavey and his family run the Seavey’s IdidaRide Sled Dog Tours on Old Exit Glacier Road outside of town. Visit their website to book your tour. https://ididaride.com/

Seward Mile Zero of the original Iditarod Trail. Photo: Stock.

Check out these books by Libby Riddles about her victory as the first woman to win the Iditarod.
https://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=libby+riddles+books&tag=mh0b-20&index=aps&hvadid=77996660168487&hvqmt=b&hvbmt=bb&hvdev=c&ref=pd_sl_7xfov41cwn_b

Blog by Liberty Elias Miller. Visit her website here: https://www.libertyeliasmiller.com/

Alaska seems to have a voice louder than any other place. She has called over the centuries to the souls of outcast men, and lured them to her from far and wide. John Muir, Georg Stellar (no, I didn’t spell his first name wrong), Chris McCandless, and countless others. Hundreds, thousands, have risked it all in the hopes of finding peace within the wilds of the 49^th state.

Though our history books regale us with the tales of wild men, what about the women who have felt the pull of Alaska? I certainly am not exempt from her siren song.

From 1914 until 1954, there stood 26 houses between 2^nd and 3^rd avenues in Seward, Alaska. This area of town went by many names – Alley B, The Line, and the Red Light District. If you stand there today, all that remains is a row of cottonwood trees, but in the days of yore, it was the beating heart of Seward commerce.

In 1930, the population of Seward was 504. Only 130 of that population was female, thanks to the waves of young, single men who were stationed in Seward during WWII. And of those 130 females, only a small handful were Ladies of the Night. Men would stand in line waiting for admission into these bawdyhouses, and one man, then young, but now weathered with age, remembers being terrified of the Madam as she would step out onto the porch and holler “who’s next?!”.

But those Madam’s, they were the wealthiest in town. A local man who used to do the taxes for Madam Stella Brown claimed that she earned one of the highest incomes in the entire territory, and tax records show that the Madam’s of Seward owned more property than any man. As they say, prostitutes are always the wealthiest in town. The cost of visiting a bawdyhouse was either $2 or $5, depending on the services provided. Five dollars in 1914 would be the equivalent of nearly $121 dollars in 2018.

Of course, prostitution wasn’t exactly legal, but since these ladies were not drug addicts, were not impoverished, and had no turf battles between one another, each house was simply fined $25 per month, an income that the city of Seward desperately needed. The Good Time Girls were not trouble makers in any way, and according to many historical documents, they are remembered as women with kind hearts who donated vegetables from their gardens to the community. They are also remembered for their fashion. With dresses shipped from New York City, the women were the best-dressed in town, and apparently never dressed provocatively, feeling that their services didn’t need “selling”.

People say that the Seward prostitutes were also “unusually old”, most of them in their 50’s. Perhaps due to their age, there was a noticeable absence of unwanted pregnancies and children, so the respectable women of Seward seemed to have no qualms with the ladies and their chosen profession, resting easy at night knowing that their children had no unsolicited siblings.

Back in the good ‘ole days, young boys had paper routes. Seward was no different. What was different, however, is that apparently the local boys fought over who got to deliver the paper to Alley B. One boy paid his boss $20 (the equivalent of $483 today) for the joy of calling that route his, and he bragged to his friends one day about seeing a naked woman in the window of one of the houses.

None of the Good Time Girls of Seward were locals. Each and every one of them had come from the lower 48, heading the call of the wild north. They arrived on ships to a new land where the promise of money lured them as strongly as it did any man. Alaska’s history was created by strong and adventurous men, but it can be argued that the reason those men prospered was due to the companionship of equally strong and adventurous women.

Seward 2018. The Line used to be in the alley, Alley B, between 2nd and 3rd avenues

By Liberty Elias Miller.
Visit her blog here: https://www.libertyeliasmiller.com/

I remember the first time I heard the word Kenai. I was sixteen years old and was standing alone in the kitchen of my childhood home early in the morning when I heard scratching at the garage door. Cautiously, I pulled the door open and was engulfed in a sea of sloppy kisses from a Rottweiler puppy so precious it nearly hurt. From behind me, I heard my brother say “Kenai, don’t jump”.

My family has a history with Alaska that spans generations, but that’s how I learned about the Kenai Fjords National Park. My brother’s desire to visit the 49^th state was unparalleled, and Kenai was the most perfect name for his four-legged companion. Little did I know that seven years later I would find myself living in Alaska by random chance. And little did I know that I would fall deeply in love with the place.

Seward is the gateway to the Kenai Fjords National Park, which was established in 1980 by President Jimmy Carter (before 1980 it was a National Monument) and covers 669,984 acres on the Southeast side of the Kenai Peninsula. The park is roughly 51% ice and contains the Harding Icefield, which was first formed about 23,000 years ago and is one of the largest icefields in the United States (side note: Harding Icefield is stunning and spectacularly breathtaking and worth the hike).

Harding Icefield. Photo by Jackie Hogan.

I’m a history nerd, so what interested me was the fact that in 1993 the park service conducted a survey and documented native village sites dating as far back as 1200 AD (I can’t even comprehend how long ago that was! Can you?). They also documented an earthquake in 1170 AD that lowered the shoreline by six feet (history is so rad).

The highest point in the Kenai Fjords National Park is an unnamed peak in the Kenai Mountains that stands at 6,450 feet. The lowest point in the park is, of course, the deep fjords that give the land its fame. The sea floor at its deepest points of the fjords can be up to 1,000 miles below the surface. I once kayaked in a fjord in Southeast Alaska that was 1,000 feet deep. Much like gazing up into space, floating on top of deep water has a way of putting your insignificance into prospective.

This slice of stunning and pristine land, one of only three Alaska National Parks that can be reached via road, has been luring people here for as long as there has been people in Alaska. Once it became a park, the first improvements were to access Exit Glacier, which rests just outside the Seward city limits. The wildness of the Harding Icefield, the fjords that were carved out of land by powerful ice, and the convenience of having Seward as your muster point are all experiences that no visitor to Alaska should miss.

Seward from Mount Marathon. Photo by Jackie Hogan.

Book your stay at Sauerdough Lodging, in downtown Seward, and see for yourself “the ice that started a fire” (John Muir).
Blog by Liberty Elias Miller. Visit her website here: https://www.libertyeliasmiller.com/

There’s a magical place in this world. It’s called the North Pole. I’m sure you’ve heard of it. But I’m not talking of the spot in the Arctic Ocean where the earth’s axis of rotation meets the surface, though did you know that the sea depth at the North Pole is a shocking 13,980 feet?! Yikes.

I’m talking of Santa’s North Pole. And while we all know that the North Pole isn’t really real…it actually is kind of real.

There exists in Alaska a snow-dusted (more like snow-dumped) town called North Pole, which lies near the city of Fairbanks. Here, in this town of roughly 2,117 people, everything is all about Christmas. All year long.

The most popular attraction is, of course, the Santa Claus House, an old trading post turned, well…turned into Santa’s house. Each year the North Pole post office receives hundreds of thousands of letters to Santa from boys and girls around the world, and a community program exists to respond to those letters. Thousands more send their annual Christmas cards to the North Pole where they are stamped with the towns postmark before being forwarded to their recipients.

Picture the scene: Santa’s house nestled into the snowy terrain of the Alaska wilderness, elves carrying red and white sparkly wrapped packages, reindeer (like actual Alaskan reindeer) puffing out white plumes of hot breath, the big man himself belly-laughing on his throne, and the northern lights licking the sky above you.

Sounds pretty surreal and magical, right? Only in Alaska can these things exist. Alaska – a state where every spec of soil and air and water is infused with real-life magic.

Speaking of the northern lights…just south of Anchorage, on your way to Seward, is the town of Girdwood, a once-quaint village that is still a quaint village but now has a movie-set feel to it. Nestled at the base of Mount Alyeska in Girdwood is the Alyeska Resort, a monstrous hotel that at the same time looks out of place, yet oddly and perfectly in place.

The northern lights over Alyeska Resort in Girdwood

When the northern lights do their winter dance in the skies over Girdwood, Alyeska Resort offers their guests a wake-up call, because you will never remember those few lost minutes of sleep once you lay your eyes upon the lights in the sky and feel their power in your soul.

Basically, the moral of this story is that Alaska is probably one of the best places to spend a guaranteed white Christmas. It’s sure to create the most beautiful and lasting memories.

To send your letters to Santa, address them to:

Santa Claus
1 Santa Claus Lane
North Pole 99705

To experience the magic of winter in Alaska, book your stay at the Sauerdough Lodge in Seward.

The Seward boat harbor in winter

To experience the magic of winter in Alaska, book your stay at the Sauerdough Lodge in Seward.

Blog by Liberty Elias Miller.
Visit her website here: https://www.libertyeliasmiller.com/

Can you imagine running down a 3,000 foot mountain in 12 minutes? Yeah, neither can we. But believe it or not, it’s actually a thing in Seward, Alaska. Like, a big thing. To call it a running event is hardly even accurate – it’s not so much running as it is sliding down sharp, loose shale and losing chunks of precious skin.

It’s called the Mount Marathon Race, and it’s been happening every year in Seward since before 1915 and is believed to be the second oldest race in American history (historians aren’t exactly sure when the start year was but believe it was as far back as 1908, though the first organized race was in 1915). Legend has it that it started out as a bet at the bar. The guy (again, no one is really sure who that guy was) ran up Mount Marathon and back down again in an hour and twenty minutes. Word spread, and soon every deckhand on every arriving ship wanted to have a go at beating the time.

These days, the race begins in downtown Seward, on the corner of Fourth and Adams, nearly right outside the doors of the Sauerdough Lodge and Sea Bean Café, and ends one block south at Fourth and Washington, after running up and down the mountain, of course. The total race distance is 3.1 miles and top racers can reach the summit in 30-40 minutes, with their downtime clocking in at an unbelievable 10-15 minutes (the 2017 winner did it in about 12 minutes). A common sight at the finish line is bloodied and muddied runners. Outside Magazine recently proclaimed that the Mount Marathon Race is the “toughest 5K in the world”. And we believe them, so we’ll stick to watching from the finish line.

The vertical gain of the course is 2,675 feet and the elevation gain is 3,022 feet. Entrants are limited to 350 men and 350 women. The first time women were allowed to race was in 1985.

Veterans of the race are an automatic shoo-in, though it’s a bit more difficult for hungry newcomers. The first step is entering the lottery, held each April. If that doesn’t work out, they can purchase raffle tickets for $10 each. Their last option is the auction – 10 men’s and 10 women’s spots are bid on. The 2017 highest bid was a staggering $3,500, with proceeds going to the Seward Chamber of Commerce to cover the cost of organizing the race.

Mount Marathon Race has no fixed course. It simply requires that runners begin at the starting line, circle around a big boulder 3,000 feet up the mountain, and end at the finish line. Other than that, it’s a free-for-all with varying routes filled with varying levels of danger. Most runners take a tumble more than once, slicing open their bodies on the loose shale. Bear attacks are also a threat, along with falling boulders, cliffs, and the potential of becoming lost on the mountain. Basically, Mount Marathon Race is a gnarly, brutal, yet iconic part of Alaskan history that holds much glory, and people want to be a part of it. All estimated 30,000 people who visit Seward over Fourth of July.

So, I suppose the moral of this story is if you want to visit Seward during Mount Marathon and see the spectacle with your own eyes, you should really book your accommodation now. It gets crazy around here in early July.

Also, the Seward Chamber of Commerce is now accepting submissions for the 2018 Mount Marathon Race logo. Visit their website here for more details: http://www.seward.com/

Blog by Liberty Elias Miller. Visit her website here: https://www.libertyeliasmiller.com/