Chinook's Legacy - From Mutt to the New Hampshire State Dog

Part 4 of this series:

These signs and plaques are all located on Route 113A "The Chinook Trail" in Wonalancet, New Hampshire. 

ADMIRAL BYRD MEMORIAL

TO

ALL NOBLE DOGS

WHOSE LIVES WERE GIVEN ON DOG TREKS

DURING THE TWO EXPEDITIONS TO

LITTLE AMERICA ANTARCTICA

TO FURTHER SCIENCE AND DISCOVERY

1928 - 1930           1933-1935

DEDICATED OCTOBER 8, 1998

CHINOOK KENNELS

Purchased and moved to this site in 1930 by

Milton and Eva B. "Short" Seeley, these kennels

produced sled dogs for exploration, racing, and

showing.  For almost 50 years Chinook kennels

exerted a profound influence upon the Alaskan

Malamute and Siberian Husky breeds, and many

champions were born here.  With Milton directing,

dog teams were sent on to the Byrd Antarctic 

Expeditions and to the Army's Search and Rescue

units.  After his death in 1943, Eva continued

alone.  An author, sled dog racer, and dynamic

contributor to the sport of dogsledding, "Short"

was named to the Musher's Hall of Fame in Alaska.

Mrs. Seeley died in 1985 at age 94.

The Evening Star, Washington D. C,
9 June 1930, page 12

"BYRD DOGS' LEADER

HONORED BY STATE

--------------

New Hampshire Dedicates Road as

"Chinook Trail" as a Tribute

to Four-Footed Hero

-----------------

Special Dispatch to the Star and to the

New York Times.

TAMWORTH, N.H., June 9. -  While

medals are being struck for Admiral

Byrd and the men of his Antarctic

expedition, now rolling homeward on 

their two ships off the coast of their 

own country, an enduring honor has

been paid to one who is not coming

back, a four-footed hero of the great

adventure who died alone out on the 

desolate ice barrier.                            

     "Chinook Trail" is the name given

by the Governor of New Hampshire and

his council to the new stretch of road

leading from Tamworth to Wonalancet,

past the homestead of Arthur T.

Walden, veteran of the Yukon, who was

Admiral Byrd's chief dog driver.  It

commemorates the loyalty of a dog to

man, the faithful service of the noble

Chinook, the leader of the teams that

hauled the burdens over the pressure

ridges and round the crevasses, and

made possible the flight over the South

Pole.                                                

     Already a mile and a half of the 

$10,000 six mile highway has been

graded, and it will be ready for the 

Midsummer traffic of motorists making

the pilgrimage to the Walden farm to

see the veteran dogs of the Antarctic

and the fast-growing puppies who were

born at Little America on the edge of

the Ross Sea."                                      

The Walden farmstead still stands on Route 113A, the "Chinook Trail" in Wonalancet (Tamworth), New Hampshire.  

The original Chinook kennels were established by Arthur Treadwell Walden, who raised the original dog named Chinook, and bred the puppies that led to the dog breed of the same name.  After his Antarctic expedition of 1929 - 1930, Walden lost interest in breeding, and his kennel managers Ava and Milton Seeley became breeders of sled dogs and bought out the kennels.  They did not work on the Chinook breed, but on Alaskan Malamutes and Siberian Huskies. Julia Lombard took over the breeding of the Chinooks at Hubbard Kennels, and she also lived in this neighborhood of Wonalancet.  Julia worked with Perry Greene, who became a Chinook breeder, too. 

Katherine Sleeper Walden, Arthur's wife, maintained the farmhouse in Wonalancet as a summer home. In 1948 there was a tragic fire at the homestead, and Arthur died trying to put out the fire.  Katherine and Arthur are buried next to the Wonalancet Union Chapel, next door to their homestead.  

In 2009 the New Hampshire House of Representatives voted on Senate Bill 13 to designate the Chinook the official state dog of New Hampshire.  Governor John Lynch signed the bill at the Lurgio Middle School in Bedford, New Hampshire.  The seventh graders at the Lurgio School Spearheded the campaign to put the Chinook bill before the statehouse.  The Guiness Book of World Records lists the Chinnok as the rarest dog, with less than 100 puppies born each year.  All Chinooks descend from the famous "Chinook" who accompanied Walden and Byrd to the South Pole in 1929 - 1930, who descended from a Mastiff, and a Greenland Husky descended from "Polaris", Admiral Peary's lead dog on his expedition to the North Pole. 

For the truly curious:

Chinook and His Family: True Dog Stories, by Martha A. L. Seeley and Eva Brunell Lane, Boston: Ginn and Company, 1930

The Tamworth Narrative, by Marjory Gane Harkness, Silver Mountain Press, 1958 (this book is available from "The Other Store" in Tamworth, New Hampshire  603-323-8872)

For another famous Chinook dog, see the story of "Charger", who was a Vietnam War hero:  http://www.intervalechinooks.net/Charger.html

Watch the New Hampshire State House vote on making the Chinook the New Hampshire State Dog:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTVHBnwC-ao 

A 1940 newsreel "Chinook's Children"  (about ten minutes long):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFnDas6-9_I


My previous blog posts in this series:

Part 1 "Who was Chinook?":
https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2020/05/who-was-chinook.html

Part 2 "Chinook's Operation":
https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2020/05/chinooks-operation.html  

Part 3  "Chinook's Final Great Adventure at the South Pole"
https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2020/05/chinooks-final-great-adventure-at-south.html   


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To cite/link to this blog post: Heather Wilkinson Rojo, "Chinook's Legacy - From Mutt to the New Hampshire State Dog", Nutfield Genealogy, posted June 4, 2020, ( https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2020/06/chinooks-legacy-from-mutt-to-new.html: accessed [access date]).

Chinook's Final Great Adventure at the South Pole

The Bee (Danville, VA)
24 Feb. 1928, front page
via Ancestry.com

"TRAIN DOGS BYRD IS TO USE ON TRIP 

Sled Expert Getting Canines in Condition for Voyage to South Pole   

Richmond, Va. Feb 24 - (AP) - Commander Richard Evelyn Byrd has recently visited Monalancet [sic], N. H., on a tour of inspection of his dog teams now being trained there for his projected trip to the south pole where three dog teams are in training, according to information here.  

     These dogs are being trained by Arthur T. Walden, noted sled-dog expert, who will be Byrd's do chief of the south pole expedition.  Mr. Walden, in addition to training the dogs, is now breaking in three assistants. They are W. D. Vaughan, A. D. Crocker, and S. C. Crocker, all Harvard graduates.  

   A hundred dogs carefully selected, with seven dogs to a team, will be taken by Commander Byrd.  At present only three teams are being groomed.  One lead dog is hitched in front, while the six others are hitched in pairs behind.  One of these dogs now being groomed is the famous Chinook, hero of many Arctic expeditions.

     Each dog team will haul 2,000 pounds over the Antarctic snow and ice and will be used in equipping the various supply bases which Byrd will establish before he makes his final dash by airplane to the bottom of the world.  Approximately 3,500 miles will have to be covered by the dog teams in establishing these bases.  

     The trail will lead across the 500 miles of the practically flat Ross ice barrier, which extends from the Bay of Whale to the mountain barrier marking the beginning of the vast, unexplored south polar continent.  The first step will be to build a base on the barrier far enough in from the Bay of Whale to insure against breaking off or floating away from the ice ring.  Then the dog teams will be sent out in the direction of the pole to mark possible landing places for the three planes to be taken along.

     Commander Byrd expects to mark out the bases every 200 miles, using his planes to carry food and fuel supplies until the barrier is reached.  At the mountain barrier the final base will be established about 350 miles from the ultimate goal.

     The remaining 80 dogs to be taken will be assembled in Greenland and shipped to this country by Inspector Joy of the Northwest mounted police, an old friend of the commander.  The problem of transporting the dogs through the torrid zone is a serious one and may require special refrigeration.

     Among the equipment Commander Byrd inspected while at Monalancet [sic] was the "umbrella type" tent, a new design to be used on the expedition...."

Arthur Treadwell Walden gained fame, along with Chinook, as a sled dog racer.  He learned to race in Alaska and Yukon during the Gold Rush of 1898, and came home to establish a kennel in Wonalancet, New Hampshire. He won races all over New England, and bred Chinook from one of Admiral Peary's sled dogs and one of his own farm dogs.  Chinook and his descendants were such good racers and pets that he continued to work on the breed for years.  

The Byrd Expedition to the South Pole was in 1928 to 1930.  Arthur T. Walden of Wonalancet, New Hampshire was named as the lead dog trainer, and he shipped the dogs from New York in the fall of 1928 by boat to Antarctica.  The base camp "Little America" was established on the Ross Ice Shelf, and the dog teams hauled cargo for the explorers.  Byrd returned to North America in June 1930, and the dogs were shipped ahead.  Walden had trained 100 dogs for the expedition, and Chinook was the father of 50 of the sled dogs.  

Sadly, in January 1929 Chinook, the lead dog, and favorite of Walden, disappeared from the camp.  There were conflicting stories, but it seems that Chinook wandered off and ever returned.  Newspapers around the world carried the news, including the front page of the New York Times.  

Hamilton Daily News, Hamilton, Ohio, front page, 25 April 1930

Chinook Said Goodbye!
Just an Arctic Dog But Master Weeps
As He Praises Him
"New York, April 28 - (AP) Arthur T. Walden, veteran of a thousand snowy trails, who were down to Antarctica as chief dog driver on the Byrd expedition, came home on the ice-scarred whaler C. A. Larsen today.
     Sixty-eight dogs came back with him - heroes, their job well done.
     But Chinook, their undisputed king when they sailed from Norfolk a year and a half ago - Chinook, who always slept at the foot of his master's bed - was not among them.
     And Chinook's master will never return to Antarctica.
     The gray-haired Walden, who was driving dog teams in Alaska before the gold rush of '98, paid his tribute to Chinook.
     As he finished he turned away, and his keen blue eyes - so intensely blue in his race, reddened by nearly 40 years on the trails- were filled with tears.
     "I'll never be half the man Chinook was," he said simply.
     "It was January 17 a year ago, his twelfth birthday, that Chinook passed away. The going was pretty hard down there, and you see, Chinook was an old dog.
      "The day before he went away, three of the other dogs pitched on him and put him down.  That was the first time Chinook had ever been off his feet in a fight in his life.  I guess he realized then that he was through.
      "That night he said good-bye to me.  Three times in the night he woke me up, putting his paw on my face.  He didn't whine or anything but he seemed to be trying to tell me something.
      "I didn't harness him the next morning, but as I started down the trail he followed me a little way.  Then he just - disappeared.
      "One of the men said he saw him last, a long way off on the barrier, going away.  That's the way they do, you know.  When they realize they're through, they just go off by themselves and die.  Chinook never came back.
      "Chinook was the grandest lead dog I've ever seen.  And he was more than a dog.  I miss the old fellow more all the time.  Often at night I dream about him.
      "Well - he didn't die in the harness.  But he died with his boots on.  And he was more of a man than I'll ever be."

---------------------------

Chinook's disappearance was covered world wide. After returning to New Hampshire, Arthur Walden was disinterested in continuing to race and breed his dogs. The Chinook Kennels in Wonalancet continued to operate under the Seeley family.  They bred Chinooks and Huskies for racers, pets, and for the US government.  The Chinooks continued to be excellent sled dogs, and wonderful pets that were friendly and gentle. Arthur T. Walden lived at the farm in Wonalancet, where he died in a fire in 1947.

Although the original dog, Chinook was gone, his story lived on as can be seen from the "Junior Pages" of the Jersey Journal, Secaucus, New Jersey, on 2 February 1929
"Dear Juniors,
Did you notice that the newspapers this week gave several columns of space to a story about a dog? The dog is Chinook, one of the big brown Eskimo huskies which went with Com. Byrd to the South Pole. Chinook was a "lead dog" and most faithful. On his twelfth birthday he went out into the snow and ice and never returned and the whole Byrd camp mourn his loss... Walden the man who trains the dogs and to whom they respond like soldiers in an army, is heart-sick at the loss of his most faithful dog... It isn't often that dogs get so prominent a place in a newspaper as these dogs with the Byrd expedition have. I hope the Juniors have been following these stories and I hope you will read this one about fine old Chinook... Doesn't it please you to know these dogs who deserve honor are getting it?  Yours sincerely, THE EDITOR"

This blog post is part 3 of a series of stories about Chinook. I'll be posting more about Chinook's legacy next week.

Part 1 "Who was Chinook?":
https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2020/05/who-was-chinook.html

Part 2 "Chinook's Operation":
https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2020/05/chinooks-operation.html

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Heather Wilkinson Rojo, "Chinook's Great Adventure at the South Pole", Nutfield Genealogy, posted May 21, 2020, ( https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2020/05/chinooks-great-adventure-at-south-pole.html: accessed [access date]).

Who was Chinook?

Chinook 1924 (signed) Arthur T. Walden

Did you know that the official state dog of New Hampshire is a Chinook?  What is a Chinook? For the next few weeks I will be exploring the origins of the Chinook dogs in New Hampshire.  Why? Because I’m the proud auntie of a Chinook dog in Tamworth who is about to have her first litter of puppies.  The history of this breed is fascinating, and there are many family ties to the origins of these dogs, too.

Arthur Treadwell Walden of Wonalancet (a village of Tamworth), New Hampshire founded the breed of sled dogs known as Chinooks. They are considered one of the rarest breeds of AKC dogs.  Walden learned about sled dogs when he went to the Klondike during the 1896 Gold Rush.  He was well known as a breeder, and supplied sled dogs for Admiral Robert Peary’s expedition to the North Pole.  One of Peary’s sled dogs bred with a mixed breed mastiff and St. Bernard mutt and produced his lead sled dog, Chinook.

Chinook, Walden’s dog, became the father and grandfather of this breed of sled dogs.  All known dogs of this breed are descended from Chinook.  He was large, about 100 pounds, and could haul about 150 pound sleds. This new dog was extremely well built for sledding and pulling heavy loads of freight.  It was no surprise that Chinook and 16 of his descendants accompanied Walden and Admiral Richard Byrd to Antarctica in 1928.  Chinook was very popular in the press during the Antarctic expedition, and when he disappeared during the trip to the South Pole the newspapers were full of stories about this faithful and unique dog.

Walden and his dog, Chinook

When Walden returned to New Hampshire after the South Pole expedition, the state wanted to name a highway after him.  He convinced the legislature to name the road after Chinook.  Today Route 113A in Tamworth and Wonalancet is called “The Chinook Trail”.

Arthur Treadwell Walden died in 1947 of a heart attack following a fire at his house in Wonalancet.  After his death the Chinook breed almost went extinct.  By 1965 there were only 125 Chinooks alive, and the numbers went even lower in the following years. By 1981 there were only 28 Chinooks (and only eleven breedable dogs).  A group of Chinook breeders staged a comeback for this dog to save it from extinction.  In 2009 the Chinook became the state dog of New Hampshire, and by 2013 the Chinook joined the AKC as a working dog.  

Today there are about 400 purebred Chinooks registered with the AKC, so the breed is still considered rare.  This summer my puppy “nieces” and “nephews” will be some of the first Chinooks born in Tamworth in many, many years.

In the next few weeks on Thursday I will feature some of the stories and newspaper accounts of Chinook and his descendants here at my blog Nutfield Genealogy.

Genealogical Information:

Arthur Treadwell Walden was born on 10 May 1871 in Indianapolis, Indiana, the son of Reverend Treadwell Walden and Elizabeth Leighton.  He married Katherine Sleeper in 1902 at the farm in Wonalancet, New Hampshire.  He died on 26 March 1947 at the farmhouse after a fire.  He was found dead in the kitchen trying to rescue his wife and the house with buckets of water from the sink. They did not have children.  Katherine and Arthur are buried at the burial ground next to the Wonalancet Union Chapel in Tamworth near the former farmstead. 

Arthur was a descendant of Captain Thomas Walden (Waldin) (1681 – 1724) and Sarah Cotton of Portsmouth, New Hampshire.  Their son, another Captain Thomas Walden (about 1721 – 1768) married Anna Treadwell, the daughter of Jacob Treadwell and Sarah Cotton.  Jacob Treadwell (1699 – 1770) is my 7^th great uncle, born in Ipswich, Massachusetts.  I descend from Jacob's brother, Jabez Treadwell (1713 – 1780).  You can read more about Jabez Treadwell at these two links:  https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2014/03/tombstone-tuesday-jabez-treadwell-died.html  and https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2009/10/jabez-treadwells-will.html 

Katherine “Kate” Sleeper was Arthur’s cousin (by marriage) and wife.  She owned the 1300 acre farm in Wonalancet where they raised their sled dogs.  She was the daughter of Charles Frederick Sleeper and Zilpha Loring Thomas, and the granddaughter of Captain John Sleeper. Mount Katherine in the Sandwich Range was named for Kate Sleeper Walden.  There is also a Kate Sleeper Trail nearby. 

Charles Frederick Sleeper, born 27 December 1826 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, married Zilpha Loring Thomas on 24 October 1855 in Roxbury, Massachusetts.  Zilpha was a descendant of the John Alden and Priscilla Mullins family from the Mayflower.  The Sleepers originated in Hampton, New Hampshire and are the descendants of the immigrants Thomas Sleeper (1607 – 1696) and his wife Joanna.  I’m related to the family of Kate Sleeper through the Sleepers, Sanborns, Batchelders, and other early seacoast New Hampshire families.

For more information on the genealogy of Arthur Treadwell Walden, please see Janice Webster Brown’s article on him at her blog Cow Hampshire:  http://www.cowhampshireblog.com/2006/05/27/wonalancet-new-hampshire-chinook-breeder-dog-trainer-and-antarctica-dog-driver-arthur-treadwell-walden-1871-1947/  

For the truly curious:

Arthur Treadwell Walden wrote two books about his dogs, A Dog puncher on the Yukon, 1928, and also, Harness and Pack, 1935. 

A book by Norman Vaughan and Cecil B. Murphey, With Byrd at the Bottom of the World, 1990, has a lot of good information on Walden and his Chinook dogs. 

The American Kennel Club, Chinook webpage:   https://www.akc.org/dog-breeds/chinook/ 

Chinook Owners Association:  https://chinook.org/   

Wikipedia:    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinook_(dog)  

Chinook Club of America:   http://www.chinookclubofamerica.org/  

“A leisurely hike up Mount Katherine”, March 14, 2014, https://www.conwaydailysun.com/outdoors/a-leisurely-hike-up-mount-katherine/article_32b32540-b81d-57ac-b22e-5199861739b1.html  

And a previous blog post from 2014 about the Chinook dogs:

https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-new-hampshire-state-dog-chinook.html    

"Chinook's Legacy: From Mutt to the New Hampshire State dog" 

https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2020/06/chinooks-legacy-from-mutt-to-new.html  
 

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To cite/link to this blog post:  Heather Wilkinson Rojo, "Who was Chinook?", Nutfield Genealogy, posted May 7, 2020, ( https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2020/05/who-was-chinook.html: accessed [access date]).