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Editor: The following is an excerpt from “Aunt Phil’s Trunk: Volume 3,” an Alaska history book by Laurel Downing Bill. It is scheduled to be released in May, and will be available at Gulliver’s Books, Barnes & Noble and at www.auntphilstrunk.com.

A mission of mercy raced along the Iditarod Trail four years before the famed 1925 serum run that inspired the Last Great Race to Nome.

Dr. John B. Beeson, one of Anchorage’s most respected doctors, hopped onboard a train early in the morning of Jan. 24, 1921, and headed toward Iditarod after receiving news from the U.S. Army Signal Corps that Claude Baker was near death.

Baker, a well-known Iditarod banker, was suffering from an old injury he’d received while serving as a guard on the gold trail outside of the famous mining town. He’d been thrown some distance while holding the gee-pole, which caused internal injuries. The banker also had a lung ailment.

Along with Bill Corey and his race-winning team of setters and six malamutes, Beeson’s race against time began with a ride to “end of steel” near Broad Pass. The railroad crews en route laid aside all of the switching to give the mercy train clearance.

Once they hit the end of the tracks, Corey and Beeson hitched up Corey’s team and raced 54 miles to Healy, where a locomotive and caboose waited to take them to Nenana.

By 11 p.m. Beeson was sitting on the sled of the “Scurvy Kid,” flying down the trail out of Nenana heading north. But after only a few miles, the Kid misjudged a turn and crashed.

Doctor becomes musher

The good doctor dug the Kid out of the snow, loaded the injured musher onto the sled and jumped on the runners. His first lesson on dog mushing took him 23 miles to Bachelors Cabin, where he left the Kid and hooked up with Indian William Jimmie, who took him another 58 miles.

Exhausted after 36 hours without rest, Beeson managed to climb into a horse-drawn bobsled and continue on his mission. It was slow going, but the horse plodded along for 21 miles, bucking in the deep snow.

An ex-soldier and his team met Beeson on the trail and took him to Tolovana, where another relay was waiting and ready to help him on his journey.

Eleven dogs pulled with all their might, and the doctor’s sled whipped down the Tanana River on its way to Fort Gibbon and the Yukon River. Guided more by instinct than by sight, the dogs sped through the darkness, until they hit an overflow of river ice four miles before Gibbon.

The musher plunged into the icy water and got soaked to above his knees.

Beeson, tied to the sled so he wouldn’t be thrown off while traveling at breakneck speeds, tried desperately to untie the rope binding him to the sled. But he couldn’t find the knots. As he sank into the frigid water, he thought the end had come, he later recalled.

Then the sled lurched forward. The dogs pulled him out of the stream and up the bank to safety.

With temperatures hovering at 20 below zero, and the wind blowing a gale, the musher told Beeson he thought he could keep warm by running the last few miles.

But once they reached Gibbon, Beeson discovered that the musher had frozen part of one foot and both big toes. He had to administer medical aid before collapsing into a bed at 8 p.m.

Dr. Beeson mushes

to Iditarod

He arose at 4 a.m., ate breakfast and headed out again with another musher and 13 dogs. They sprinted 50 miles down the river to Birches, where Beeson was met by a soldier named Shannon. The soldier’s 11-dog team made the 40-mile dash to Kokrines.

Indian Paul was waiting for Beeson at Kokrines, and sensing the sporting feature of the race, made the 30 miles into Ruby in just four hours. By the time the doctor arrived in Ruby, he’d spent 23 hours traveling 120 miles from Nenana.

An enlisted man stationed with ACS in Ruby put Beeson into a sled and hauled him the 30 miles to Long with his 11-dog team. He then turned the doctor over to a young Scandinavian with 13 dogs, and they made the next 30-mile run to Poorman.

A wild, unmanageable team took over for the Poorman to Lone Mountain portion of the trip. Beeson later said he would never forget that mad race of 30 miles on a clear night through timber when all the dogs knew was to travel straight ahead.

Beeson at bedside after

mushing 5 1/2 days

A soldier named Burke and his team of malamutes met the doctor at Lone Mountain. Considered one of the best mushers on the Yukon, Burke delivered his cargo to Cripple where the next relay was waiting.

A new 11-dog team and musher whisked Beeson on to Ophir, 40 miles down the trail, where another team met him and mushed through a pitch-black night. They made the 60-mile trip to Shermans in record time.

The last team, driven by Charley Brink, ran the 18 miles to Iditarod and put Beeson at the bedside of Claude Baker just 130 hours after the doctor had stepped off the locomotive in Nenana.

The remarkable 512-mile adventure got Beeson to the banker and manager of the Otter Creek Dredge Co. in time to save his life. The banker was in the advanced stages of pulmonary tuberculosis, according to Gay and Laney Salisbury, authors of “The Cruelest Miles.”

Thanks to the headquarters’ managers of the Northern Commercial Co., Messrs. Goss at Tanana, Parsons at Ruby and Sam Applebaum at Iditarod, teams had been ready and equipped at points along the way to aid Beeson on his journey.

“Not a man failed and we were not delayed a minute by having to wait for the next team to arrive,” Beeson later reported.

Beeson heads home

It took Beeson less than a week to travel to Iditarod, but it took him 14 days to reach the railroad on his trip out with his patient.

He traveled over the trail through Rainy Pass with Charley Brink, and later was joined on the trail by mushing legend Leonard Seppala, who was taking out Col. John C. Gotwals and Anton Eide of the Alaska Road Commission.

“Dr. Beeson proved himself a real sourdough and musher,” Col. Gotwals said of the doctor. “Breaking trail all day, especially when at the Salmon River, the temperature was 51 below during the day and 40 below at night.”

With four teams and 43 dogs, the party traveled along the Kuskokwim to near the south fork, where an overflow forced them to turn back 13 miles and take the route through the hills. Near the mouth of the Post River, the trail led over a glacier at least 150 feet high. The men had to unhitch the dogs, except Seppala’s 1916 Nome Sweepstakes leader, and coast down the glare ice on about a 40 percent grade.

Seppala leads the way

Seppala later recounted his experience with Beeson:

“… When we started out from McGrath, Doctor Beeson was on his way back to his patients at the hospital at Anchorage, and though they had a two days’ start on us, we caught up with them….

“… We all traveled close together, taking turns in leading the way, and one man from each outfit going ahead on snowshoes or skis breaking trail. At Susitna Station the doctor found it necessary for him to continue on through the night, as he was in a hurry to get back to Anchorage. His dogs were pretty well used up by this time, so the Major offered to change teams with him, and I was to take the doctor through. The next day we arrived at Anchorage, making the last lap of what was known as the first relay drive ever undertaken in Alaska.”

Once he completed his 1,146-mile mushing adventure, Beeson returned to his job as chief surgeon at the Alaska Railroad Hospital. He later went back to his hometown of Wooster, Ohio, and founded a medical clinic there in 1933.

Beeson, who’d received his Alaska medical license in 1916, died in La Jolla, Calif., in 1969 at 97.