The Balto Statue in Central Park: The Story Behind the Sled Dog Everyone Climbs

Who was Balto, and what did he do?

In January 1925 a diphtheria outbreak hit Nome, Alaska, a town cut off by sea ice with its antitoxin supply running out. The nearest serum was in Anchorage, 674 miles away, and the only way to move it in a blizzard was by dog sled. Twenty mushers and around 150 dogs ran it in relay across five and a half days, in temperatures near 40 below.

Balto led the last team, driven by Gunnar Kaasen, through a whiteout so thick Kaasen couldn't see his own dogs. They pulled into Nome at 5:30 a.m. on February 2, and the epidemic was stopped. Because Balto's team arrived with the serum, Balto became the face of the run. The dog who ran the longest and most dangerous stretch was actually a Siberian husky named Togo, who covered roughly 260 miles for musher Leonhard Seppala; your guide will tell you that story too. Both dogs were heroes, and the statue is meant for all of them.

New Yorkers followed the serum run in the newspapers and raised the money for a monument within months. The sculptor was Frederick George Richard Roth, who also made Central Park's Mother Goose. The statue was unveiled on December 17, 1925, and Balto himself was there for it. He later lived out his life at the Cleveland Zoo and died in 1933; his preserved body is at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.

Visiting the Balto statue: where it is and what to look for

Balto is on the east side of the park near 67th Street, on a rock outcrop just west of East Drive, a three-minute walk from the Fifth Avenue and 67th Street entrance and a short stroll north of the zoo. Look for the plaque beneath him with the three words the city chose for the relay dogs: Endurance, Fidelity, Intelligence.

Two things make the stop worth more than a photo. First, he faces north, toward Nome. Second, he is one of the only statues in the park you're allowed to climb, which is why his back shines while the rest of the bronze has gone dark. Lift a child onto him and you're adding to a hundred years of the same polish.

Balto sits right between the zoo and the Mall, so he fits naturally into a walk through the park's south end, and he's a standard stop on our Central Park pedicab tours, where the story gets told the way it should be, on the way to Bethesda Terrace.

Conclusion

The Balto statue is a two-minute stop that most visitors walk past without knowing what it is. Now you do: a real dog, a real blizzard, a town saved, and the one monument in the park built so that children would climb it. If you'd rather hear it from a guide, a pedicab tour passes Balto on the way through the south end of the park and will stop for the photo.