Mushers, dogs braved Alaska winter to deliver lifesaving serum 100 years ago

FILE - Leonhard Seppala and his sled dog team pictured on Oct. 12, 1928, in Alaska. In 1925, Seppala was part of the nearly 700-mile relay of mushers and dog teams to get diphtheria antitoxin to Nome, Alaska, during a deadly outbreak of the disease. FILE - Gunnar Kaasen poses with his original dog team — including his lead dog Balto, top row, second left, in 1925 — which he drove through a blinding blizzard to deliver lifesaving serum, in Nome, Alaska. FILE - Gunnar Kaasen and his dogsled team leader Balto pose for a portrait in the early 1920s. FILE - The statue erected to honor "Balto" and other heroic sled dogs who carried serum to Nome, Alaska, through an Arctic blizzard is covered in snow in New York's Central Park, Dec. 11, 1947.

The Alaska Gold Rush town of Nome faced a bleak winter. It was hundreds of miles from anywhere, cut off by the frozen sea and unrelenting blizzards, and under siege from a contagious disease known as the "strangling angel" for the way it suffocated children.