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SAFETY — Carl Emmons sat at the bar of Safety Roadhouse on Wednesday, sipping black coffee as he listened to Ham radio operators report on the first day of the historic All-Alaska Sweepstakes sled dog race.

Tom Ellanna stood behind the bar, telling old Iditarod stories and explaining why hundreds of dollar bills are stapled to the wall. A pair of snowmachiners walked inside, so Ellanna cracked open the cooler.

“Can I get you guys a Budweiser?” Ellanna asked.

One of them grabbed a beer and was still wearing his helmet as they warmed up from the chilly 22-mile ride from Nome to Safety, the second-to-last checkpoint during the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race that ended about two weeks ago.

But during the Sweepstakes, a 408-mile round-trip race from Nome to Candle on the Seward Peninsula, Safety is the third checkpoint for outbound mushers and the third-to-last for inbound drivers.

Outside, the warm afternoon sun gleamed off a handful of sno-gos. Also parked was Emmons’ red Toyota Truck, the only functioning automobile for miles. It has triangular snowmachine treads instead of tires, so he can drive from Nome down the snow-packed, windswept road that is closed in winter.

Inside, Ellanna topped off Emmons’ coffee cup. The time was 1 p.m., but it had already been a long day for both of them; the last of 16 Sweepstakes mushers had blown through here about 20 minutes ago.

Some years, Iditarod mushers stop in for a cup of coffee or cold soda before heading down the final stretch to Nome. But with the Sweepstakes’ $100,000 winner-take-all purse, mushers weren’t interested in a pit stop.

Atop a barstool was Daisy, a 10-year-old English Springer sitting in her usual spot next to Emmons. She had a long day, too. Her eyes were shut. Her head sagged just above the bar. Six people at the bar giggled and whispered while they took pictures of Daisy napping. She’s the bar’s only regular canine.

“A regular mutt,” Emmons said about his dog.

Emmons’ job here is relaying times on the Ham radio. Ellanna’s job was keeping customers happy with coffee, hot chocolate or cans of cold Bud, Miller or Coors Light. He cracked open a can for Lance Johnson, who’s job as volunteer checkpoint coordinator was finished.

“We definitely volunteered for this place,” Johnson said. “This is the place to be.”

An ignominious end

Carrie Shelley walked in from the cold with her friend, Jason Skala. They had snowmachined here from Nome just to drink hot chocolate and share stories. It had been 15 years since Shelley set foot in Safety Roadhouse, the year that changed her life when she discovered her family’s Alaska connection.

In 1993, Shelley was a biology student at San Diego State. She traveled to Nome for a five-month global-warming project at the end of Cougar Rock Road outside of town. Every two weeks she would fly into Nome to shower and re-ration food supplies.

The first trip into town, she walked through Nome’s only cemetery. She passed a gravestone with the words “Baby Hegnes” chiseled in stone. Shelley was aghast: Hegnes was her mother’s maiden name.

“That was really weird,” she said. “So I called my family and asked how common that name is.”

Turned out Baby Hegnes was a deceased child of John Hegnes, her great-grandfather and the winner of the inaugural All-Alaska Sweepstakes in 1908.

Since the discovery, Shelley — a librarian at Rabbit Creek Elementary in Anchorage — has dedicated much of her life to sharing her great-grandfather’s adventurous past.

“He did all sort of things,” Shelley said.

Other than winning the first Sweepstakes, Hegnes became legendary after the 1925 Serum Run, when 20 mushers and about 150 sled dogs relayed antitoxin to save Nome from its diphtheria outbreak.

 Back then, dog teams were the only mode of transportation during the winter months. When the final musher reached Nome, Hegnes took pictures to document an event that made national headlines. But if not for him, those headlines wouldn’t have been written.

Hegnes harnessed his dogs and drove about 700 miles of trail alone toward Nenana. From there he took a train into Anchorage, then a ship headed for Seattle. It took him 22 days to deliver the news that Nome had been saved.

To honor his legacy and the centennial celebration of the Sweepstakes, Shelley brought a suitcase to Nome filled with hundreds of old letters her great-grandfather wrote years ago.

Now that the research of her great-grandfather is nearly complete, her mission is to “Free John Hegnes.” He died in 1963 in Nome, but was buried with his ex-wife in a mausoleum that sits underneath a freeway in Santa Monica, Calif. — hardly the place for a man who spent the majority of his life on the mostly uninhabited Seward Peninsula.

“What an ignominious end,” said Jason Skala, Shelly’s friend.

Miller time

Fairbanks’ Barbara Moore sat at the Safety Roadhouse bar drinking coffee and smoking Gold Coast cigarettes next to her daughter, Lisa, and told stories of past Iditarods.

They had just watched Sweepstakes mushers quickly sign in and sign out. The first musher to return isn’t expected until sometime Saturday.

“They’re just getting warmed up,” Moore said.

The Roadhouse and Tom Ellanna hold a special place in Moore’s heart. During the 1980 Iditarod, the bartender hosted a family party to greet Moore for her final stop before claiming the Red Lantern Award.

“We had reindeer stew, pilot bread and peanut butter,” Moore recalled. “I was so happy to be here. You have no idea. It was a place where I knew people.”

Only one musher, Randy Romenesko, had ever ordered a beer before heading to Nome, Ellanna said. In 1996, on his way to finishing 38th, Romenesko pulled into Safety seemingly dying of thirst.

“He saw me at the curtain and said, ‘Come on Tom, I want a Miller!’” Ellanna said. So Ellanna tossed Romenesko a cold one from the cooler of the most remote watering holes in Alaska.

Race update

Lance Mackey of Fairbanks and Jeff King of Denali Park were leading the field of 16 teams competing in this year’s Sweepstakes as of 10:30 p.m. Thursday.

Both mushers had reached the midway point at Candle and had begun their return journey to Nome.

King reached the Gold Run checkpoint, the first stop after the midway point, at 6:57 p.m., followed by Mackey 6:58 p.m. and Mitch Seavey of Seward at 7:03 p.m. Thursday.

However, Mackey moved on to the Gold Run checkpoint about an hour later, while King and Seavey had not arrived as of the 10:30 p.m. update.

What kind of schedule each musher was on is unclear because only one time is listed for each checkpoint.

Seven teams had reached Candle as of 9:30 p.m. — Sonny Lindner of Two Rivers, Jim Lanier of Chugiak, Ed Iten of Kotzebue and Ramy Brooks of Denali Park.