Dog Days

In its 35th year, Race to the Sky is the Lincoln area's longest running sled dog race, but a host of other races have taken place in and around Lincoln.

From the Lincoln Sled Dog Races that started in 1972 and were put on by the Lincoln Valley Chamber of Commerce to the LOST 170 held from 1978-85, to the Seeley Lake Race, Lincoln has been holding sled dog races for nearly half a century.

Lewis and Clark County was home to sled dog training during World War II. In 1943 at Camp Rimini, near Helena, hundreds of sled and pack dogs were trained for a possible invasion of Norway. The dogs were eventually repurposed for search and rescue missions in Alaska, Greenland, and Canada, among other places. Tasked with retrieving equipment and soldiers, these teams were credited with rescuing more than 150 survivors. Many of these dogs were part of the approximately 18,000 dogs donated by civilians to the Dogs for Defense program, which provided dogs to the Army Quartermasters Corps.

Dave Armstrong, a dog trainer at Camp Rimini in 1943, would become a key figure in supporting mushers in the Lincoln area, and in helping start the Montana Governors Cup 500 sled dog race, which evolved into the Race to the Sky.

One of the area mushers was Jack Hooker, who ran the Whitetail Ranch in Ovando starting in 1970.

"Jack got into sled dog racing in 1973," said his wife Karen Hooker.

On the way back from a trip to drop off horses in Hermiston, Ore., the couple stopped in Idaho and picked up five six-month old Siberian Husky puppies. "When he got started doing that, he had no idea what he was doing," Hooker said.

Karen said Jack consulted with Armstrong and figured out how to build a harness for the dogs. He started training them, first taking them out from the ranch and running them home. Eventually, he could drive them from the ranch and back. Around this time, Hooker said, Jack ran his first race and bought a bunch of other dogs, taking them out on long-distance races. "We traveled around and ran races," she said.

"One of the things we did at the ranch, we put on the Ovando Fun Derby between Christmas and New Year's," Hooker said. Visitors stayed in the cabins, and the race started and ended from the front gate. "At one time, there were 70 teams." The races included one-, two- and three-dog teams, as well as one for the larger dog teams.

Jack Hooker ran the Iditarod in 1976, coming in tenth, and again in 1977. He came back to Montana voicing a need for a local Iditarod qualifying race.

Race to the Sky, which has been an Iditarod qualifier from the start, became that race.

Around the same time, the Lincoln Dog Sled Race had started with just 12 teams in 1972 and grew to about 175 teams for the 1978 race. In February 1972, Jay Verdi met Woody and Carol Matlock from Great Falls, and learned there were likely 20 dog teams in Montana that might be interested in a race. Verdi worked with then-president of the Lincoln Valley Chamber of Commerce, Bob Bossing, to organize that first race in just two weeks.

Unlike Race to the Sky, the Lincoln Dog Sled Races were sprints - short distances of less than 30 miles - that dog teams ran twice over the course of the weekend. As with the Ovando Fun Derby, there were several classes of race, each allowing a different number of dogs, from three to unlimited, which was anything more than seven dogs. The race also included a Weight Pulling Contest, where dogs or teams tried to haul a loaded sled a certain distance.

By 1979 the Lincoln Sled dog Races were replaced by the LOST (Lincoln-Ovando-Seeley Lake Trail) 170 distance races that lasted until 1985.

By 1985, planning had begun for the Montana Governor's Cup Sled Dog Race, a re-invention of the 1982 Governor's Cup Gold West Territories Sled Dog Race that was run one time, covering a loop from Hamilton to Helena and Butte and back to Hamilton.

Pam Beckstrom, Race to the Sky historian and long-standing secretary, said Armstrong was one of the founding members of the Governor's Cup Sled Dog Race, along with her late husband Jack Beckstrom, and several others, including Dan Cainan, Lloyd Hallgren, Sheryl Olsen, Dave Stiller, Bill Smith, and Ron Ogden. The inaugural 500-mile continuous race started at the Capitol in Helena in 1986, but was shortened by a blinding snowstorm, said Beckstrom. This race was run under the umbrella of the Montana Mountain Mushers, Beckstrom said, and kept the Governor's Cup name until 1989, when it was changed to Centennial Sled Dog Race to commemorate Montana's statehood.

"In the spring of 1990, Montana Sled Dog, Inc. formed a nonprofit 501(c)3 corporation, and we changed the name to Race to the Sky," said Beckstrom. Like the name in those early years, the course has changed much over the years, including starts, checkpoints, and finishes at Camp Rimini, Sucker Creek Road, Frontier Town, Montana City, Butte, and many others. Additionally, the length of the races have ranged from 100-500 miles, including 250-mile races, 350-mile races, and others.

For years, Race to the Sky restart began at the 7 Up Supper Club until it burned down in 2001, then it moved to Hooper Park or Lincoln School. It ran through Lincoln along Highway 200, but the potential for injury to both the dogs and the spectators led to the establishment of the official start point at Hi Country in 2009.

Several mushers from Race to the Sky have gone on to the Iditarod. Seeley Lake's Jessie Royer placed third in the 2019 Iditarod and was the highest placing female from 2008-2011. Lincoln's Doug Swingley brought considerable notoriety to Lincoln in 1995 as the first musher from the lower 48 to win the race. Swingley won four Iditarods between 1995 and 2001 and inspired Lincoln's Iditarod Days celebration in 2003.