In March, 1973, thirty-six mushers stood at the starting line in Anchorage, Alaska, ready to run the inaugural Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. But there was one musher who didn’t run that first race to Nome: the race’s founder, Joe Redington, Sr., whose responsibilities dictated that he turn his team over to his son Raymie while he stayed behind to take care of the business of running the race. During the leisurely 20 days it took the winner to reach Nome, Redington was in Anchorage, trying to raise the money to pay the prizes.
“When I guaranteed a purse of $50,000, we didn’t have a dime,” Redington said.
Joe would come to be known as The Father of the Iditarod, with a larger than life-sized bust at Iditarod headquarters, the same bust as the first-place trophy, and a life-sized bronze statue of Joe driving his dog team at the high school near Wasilla which bears his name.
One of the best sources of race history is the Redington Family Collection at the Anchorage Museum at Rasmuson Center in Alaska’s Digital Archives. Close to 2,000 photos and slides document the family history and dozens of photos relating to the Iditarod race, beginning in 1972.
The Iditarod website has some photographs and film footage of the 1973 Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, and excerpts from interviews with some of the mushers from the first running, taken from the award-winning Insider documentary, “Purely Alaskan Iditarod,” a 120 minute historical documentary DVD which is available from the Iditarod store.
Quick comments from several mushers who ran the first race, including Rod Perry, Howard Farley, Raymie Redington and others are interspersed with scenes from the 1973 Iditarod: “I think that unknown caused it to be so irresistible to a certain type of person, you could no more turn down going than turn down your next breath. You had to go!” ~Rod Perry, 1973 Iditarod musher
There’s a good listing of both the finishing mushers and those who scratched or were withdrawn from the first race at the 1973 Iditarod race archives, showing the mushers’ names, hometown, how the finishers placed, gender (they were all males), rookie status (they were all rookies!), and how much the top finishers won. Also shown are the first race awards: Honorary Musher (Leonhard Seppala), Red Lantern (John Schultz), Race Champion (Dick Wilmarth) and Rookie of the Year (Dick Wilmarth).
In 2019 Northern Light Media published The First Iditarod: The 1973 Race from Anchorage to Nome, by Helen Hegener. In this book several mushers who ran the first race, including Bill Arpino, Ken Chase, Howard Farley, Dave Olson, Rod Perry, Ford Reeves, Mike Schreiber, and Alex Tatum, share their memories of what it was like to be one of the original pioneers setting out on the then-unknown trail, captured through recorded and videotaped interviews conducted over a span of several years. The true, first-hand stories of what happened on that inaugural 1,049 mile race, told by the men who were there.
