The glowing bronze of this statue on a rock outcropping near the East Drive at 67th Street reflects the loving pats of countless children and adults who recall the story of a heroic dog. In January 1925, the city of Nome, Alaska experienced an outbreak of diphtheria. At that time, Nome had a population of 1,429 people and there was only enough antitoxin serum in distant Anchorage to treat about 300 people exposed to the disease. A train line did run over 325 miles from Anchorage to Nenana, the station closest to Nome, but Nome was icebound seven months out of the year. Alaska's two open-cockpit planes were not safe in the frigid and windy weather. A relay of mushers and their dog-sled teams was the only way to deliver the fur-wrapped twenty-pound package of serum to the ailing community 674 miles from Nenana. The route followed the old Iditarod Trail used by mail drivers from Anchorage to Nome (now the route of the dog-sled championships). The 20 teams of over 200 dogs covered the frozen terrain at about six miles per hour, in blizzard conditions with temperatures of 50 degrees below zero. An international audience listened over their radios and read in their newspapers of the race to Nome. The last musher, Gunnar Kasson, and his team lead by Balto, a black and white Alaskan malamute, raced over the frozen tundra in only five days and seven hours - a world record time. Within days after the arrival of the serum, the epidemic, which had claimed five lives, was over.

Dedicated to the indomitable spirit of the sled dogs that relayed antitoxin six hundred miles over rough ice across treacherous waters through arctic blizzards from Nenana to the relief of stricken nome in the winter of 1925Endurance fidelity intelligence&nbsp;&nbsp;

Central Park

Balto

 Jonathan Kuhn, director of Arts &amp; Antiquities for the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation, discusses the statue of Balto, a famous Siberian husky responsible for delivering diphtheria antitoxin to the town of Nome, Alaska. 

Balto was the hero of the famous Serum Run to Nome leading a team of sled dogs 674 miles across Alaska to deliver diptheria serum. &nbsp;The run was widely publicized; afterwards Balto was invited to New York. &nbsp;He went to the dedication and spent the next two years touring the US in the Vaudeville circuit. &nbsp;He ended up in LA and was rescued by a George Kimble a businessman from Cleveland who was horrified at the conditions that the team of sled dogs were living in, purchased him for $1500, raised the money to bring the animals to Cleveland. &nbsp;They lived in the Zoo. &nbsp;

Balto

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