Had enough of the hot and humid weather?

Well, let’s turn our attention to a cooler subject, such as sled dogs and a nearly forgotten episode when a dog team pulled a sled from Lewiston to Montreal with a first-ever load of international mail.

Thanks to a reader who asked about this event, I learned that the sled dog mail delivery left Lewiston on Dec. 20, 1928, and arrived in Montreal on Jan. 14, 1929. The international mail by sled dog was conceived of and promoted as a sporting event and not a practical means for mail delivery.

Several days into the run, George Pulsifer told how the expedition was faring in a Lewiston Evening Journal story. The writer’s last name is the same as both the lead driver, Alden Pulsifer, and his backup, “Chucks” Pulsifer, but the report did not indicate if any of them were related.

In the days leading up to the start, Alden Pulsifer was enthusiastic about the abundance of snow, the newspaper report said. Then, four days of rain set in and the sledders were slogging over bare pavement before they were far from Auburn.

“The sled, which was stripped of everything but a few pounds of mail, was comparatively light, and the dogs had no trouble keeping it going,” the report said, “but it was another thing with the drivers.”

Pulsifer wrote, “They had trained to run a few miles a day, with occasional rests, riding downhill and on level stretches. They had planned on riding at least a part of the way, but conditions have made it necessary for them to run nearly every mile.”

Pulsifer continued to tell how the men and dogs struggled on the first 10 miles over “that well-named road, the Hardscrabble, in Minot.” He said “Chucks” had the toughest time, having to be moved along the course by car a few times. Both men suffered blistered feet and many cuts and bruises from falls along the way, Pulsifer said.

They were scheduled to be in Lancaster, N.H., on Christmas Day 1928 and, despite the set-backs, the dog team and drivers reached that destination at 9 p.m. Christmas night.

Pulsifer wrote that the two drivers maintained throughout their venture that they paid their own way except for the 50-cent transportation charge for each letter that was on the trip.

Some details of the trip are difficult to reconstruct. Dates and points reached along the way are unclear, but there was a photograph in the Lewiston Evening Journal on Dec. 27, 1928, showing Alden Pulsifer handing a letter from the Lewiston postmaster to the postmaster of West Berkshire, Vt.

A Web site called “mushing-canada.com” shows a postcard picturing the dog team with an inscription that says, “These famous dogs are the only team of genuine black-head Eskimo dogs in the world. It is the famous team that carried the mail from Minot, ME, to Albany, NY, driven by Alden Pulsifer, carrying letters from the Governor of Maine and the Governors of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and New York. In 1927, this team is composed of a single family. Noochaulk, the lead dog, is the mother, and Ipar, nearest the sled, is the father. They were brought out of Baffinland in the Arctic region by a MacMillan expedition. Their names are Noochaulk, Oblik, Ipunes, Chippalla, and Ipar.”

There are Web site references to letters from Mayor Wiseman of Lewiston, Mayor Walton of Auburn and officials of civic and fraternal organizations.

The trip is said to be “under authorization from the United States Post Office Department in a special ruling by Second Assistant Postmaster General W. Irving Glover.”

A return trip from Montreal, apparently under the auspices of the American Snowshoe Union, is mentioned.

Dog sledders have an illustrious history in Lewiston. In a future column, I’ll talk about Cecil “Mush” Moore of Danville, who set the World’s Championship Dog Sled Run by covering 6,000 miles from Fairbanks, Alaska, to Lewiston between November 1950 and April 1951.

Dave Sargent is a freelance writer and an Auburn native. You can e-mail him at [email protected].