Leonhard Seppala, Alaskan Dog DriverCopyright
©2008 by J. Jeffrey Bragg
THIS WEBSITE IS DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF LEGENDARY DOG DRIVER LEONHARD SEPPALA. At the moment it is brand-new and still under development. Please bear with us as we collect, organise and format information about Leonhard Seppala. We hope to create here the primary web resource for the many people who are fascinated by the tale of this great dog driver.
LEONHARD SEPPALA, all-time great dog driver, was born in Skibotn, Norway of ethnic Kven (Finnish) parentage in 1877. He grew to manhood in the village of Skjervøy, where as a youth he was apprenticed as a blacksmith. He heard tales of the Nome Gold Rush in Alaska and decided to try his luck there, emigrating in 1900. He became famous first in Alaska through his superlative dog driving skills and his domination of the Nome Sweepstakes and later throughout the USA for his crucial role in the dogsled delivery of antiserum in the 1925 Nome diphtheria epidemic. Seppala worked with and popularised the Siberian sleddog in Alaska from 1914 until 1926. Following the Serum Run he toured the USA, ending in Poland Spring, Maine, where he established Seppala Kennels in partnership with Elizabeth Ricker. When that partnership ended with the remarriage and the loss of the Poland Spring kennel dogs, he returned to Alaska, where he remained until 1946 when he retired to Seattle, Washington, where he died in 1967.
