Originally published in The Nome Nugget, Summer 1995
With special thanks to Leo Rasmussen for providing historical details.
It was in 1975 that Nome’s famous burled arch was first used as the finish marker for the Iditarod Sled Dog Race. Carl Huntington of Galena won the race in 1974 (in 20 days) but it was the last-place musher in that contest who was responsible for gracing Nome with it’s famous trail-end symbol. The Fox Lions Club north of Fairbanks donated the marker to the Bering Sea Lions Club in 1975 after Fox Lions Club member Red Fox Olson initiated the effort.
Red Fox Olson finished last in the 1974 Anchorage-to-Nome Iditarod Trail Race (as it was called then) about a minute and a half behind Joel Kottke. Olson noticed something was missing at the end of the trail: a finish line. It took Olson 29 days, 6 hours, 36 minutes, and exactly 19 seconds to finally get to Front Street and he wanted it noticed! He talked with Checker Leo Rasmussen in Nome and that discussion led to the construction of a 5,000 pound marker made of spruce logs, some with huge rounded burls. A burl is a swelling on a tree, sometimes growing to a woody lump up to two feet across.
Two spruce logs were each steadied upright by four polished logs and then spanned by a 20 foot long spruce log 10 feet off the ground. On the left burl is carved “1,049–Anchorage.” On the right burl is carved “0 Miles–Nome,” so it reads, “Anchorage–Nome, 0-1,049.” The polished log between the burls reads “End of Iditarod Dog Race.”
The job was “kind of a service project for Nome and the people in the Iditarod race,” according to Olson. “We Lions enjoy helping other people and this is our way of showing it.” About 500 manhours were put into making the sign and Fairbanks-area businessmen donated supplies. The marker was flown to Nome on a Wein Air Alaska freight plane in time for the finish of the 1975 race.
They say the Iditarod arch needs some help now: the old girl is turning 20, after all. The sign’s rotting like beach driftwood and we’ll need to replace it with a new sign one of these days. It needed its insides reinforced with resin and gets a good shellacking occasionally. You can’t leave barkless spruce sculpture outside too long without some chemical intervention.
Maybe Nome will get a new finish marker some day made out of fiberglass or metal. Perhaps somebody will want to dismantle it and ship the old one to The Musher’s Hall of Fame Museum in Knik. Or maybe replace that spindly replica they have in the Susan Butcher Gallery in Fairbanks with the real thing. I’m all for a new arch…as long as it’s made out of thick spruce trunks with big old gnarls all over it. Dragged out of Alaska’s great forests or found on some deserted beach, lashed and bolted together to form an imposing sculpture, that’s what Iditarod finishers will want to see sliding down Front Street. And perhaps the old icon could be retired to the entry door of Nome’s Alaska Airlines terminal, making an arrival in Nome official. Just like Red Fox Olson, we all like to know when we’ve finally made it.
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