The Iditarod Trail: From Resurrection Bay to Norton Sound, by Helen Hegener, published in March, 2026 by Northern Light Media, includes details on the network of groups which manage, maintain, and advocate for the Iditarod Trail, including the Alaska Bureau of Land Management, the Iditarod Historic Trail Alliance, the Iditarod Trail Committee Inc., the Iditarod Trail Blazers and many others. The heft of the book, however, comes from the complete history of the Iditarod Trail, from long before its founding as a route to the Innoko-Iditarod gold fields, to its official designation as a dogteam mail trail from Seward to Nome, to decades of becoming overgrown and unusable, to its resurrection as a race route and the northernmost Congressionally designated National Historic Trail!
Through old maps, photos, newspaper articles and original descriptions of the land and the trails through it by early explorers such as Colonel Walter L. Goodwin and James Lennox McPherson, the entire length of the route becomes clear, and the troubles and travails of those who blazed the trail are brought to life:
“The party encountered some very cold weather and was not free from blizzards. Yet but twelve days were lost on account of the weather. For four days at Dishakaket and six at Iditarod work was suspended because it was too cold for safety out of doors. The thermometers dropped to fifty-three below zero, and the coal oil congealed. Two days were lost, one at Farewell Mountain and one at Glacier, on account of blizzards.”
The history of the tripod markers which can still be found along the trail today is described:
….consisting of “three sticks of timber each, two of which were eight feet long, and the third ten or eleven feet long. These are so fastened together that the longest of the three sticks projects two or three feet over the others at the top and is directly over the trail.”
The trail from Dishakaket to Dikeman, a distance of sixty-seven miles, was marked with more than thirteen hundred tripods, or an average of 19 tripods per mile.
Over 200 photographs provide visual detail to the written descriptions and history, and one reader’s review noted the book “gave the next best adventure to actually traveling the trail myself!”
The Iditarod Trail: From Resurrection Bay to Norton Sound is available in Anchorage at Tidal Wave Books, and at Rod Perry’s well-known Iditarod Central bookstand on the corner of Fourth Avenue and E Street; in Palmer at Fireside Books, and at River City Books in Soldotna, and can be ordered through any bookstore with the ISBN (below).
The Iditarod Trail: From Resurrection Bay to Norton Sound, by Helen Hegener, published in March, 2026 by Northern Light Media. ISBN 9798252387352. 6” x 9” b/w format, 408 pages, over 200 photographs, indexed, bibliography, annotated references, extensive online resources. $29.95 plus shipping from any bookseller or directly from Northern Light Media.
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