Volunteers build replica of Seppala House

A building known as the Seppala house has found its final resting place after a long life in Nome.
Dismantled and replicated in a new building, the almost completed new building will soon reside next to the Richard Foster Building and serve as an annex to the Carrie A. McClain Memorial Museum, boasting the history of iconic musher Leonard Seppala, the 1925 Serum Run and all things Siberian husky.
The journey of the house to its current state was not an easy one and involved several baton exchanges.
In 2018 the house was on the city abatement list, deemed unsalvageable and dangerous to leave standing. That’s when former Iditarod musher and past resident of Nome Urtha Lenharr came out of the woodwork championing the cause of the house with a convincing argument for why it shouldn’t be taken down. “I got on the phone to Richard Beneville, who was the mayor at the time, and I said, ‘Richard, don’t do anything to that house. I’m coming up for Iditarod, so put a hold on tearing that house down until I get there’,” Lenharr said. “I always wanted to fix it up as a museum.”
Forty years ago, Lenharr lived in Nome and was friends with Tony Krier who first told him about the history surrounding the Seppala House. Though speculative, the ownership by Seppala has been attributed to an old photo of the musher standing in front of the house with an inscription on the back stating it was his home. Seppala, a musher and operator of a large kennel which was likely kept outside city limits, potentially used it as his “in town home” or for his family, Museum Director Cheryl Thompson said.  
Regardless, the house has remained a fixture in Nome for many years, referred to by many as the Seppala House. In the 1980s when Lenharr became familiar with the residence, his passion for mushing and Nome history kept him interested in the home which was located on the Krier’s property on Bering Street, already wasting away. Promised to Lenharr by Krier in a handshake, both forgot about the conferment of the property and moved on.
Decades later, after Krier’s passing, Lenharr’s move to Pennsylvania and many tough Nome winters, the house was sinking feet into the ground and it was determined to be unsafe and unappealing to look at.
Lenharr’s perseverance, Beneville’s belief in him and Roger Thompson’s expertise in moving houses saved the day. In 2018 the structure was moved out of town to the monofil where it sat for a few years before being relocated to the Nome landfill on the Beam Road.
While the house sat and endured one of the windiest passes around Nome, Lenharr established a nonprofit, the Seppala House Foundation, to raise money for a new building that would replicate the house.
In 2024 enough funds were raised to purchase all the material — about $10,000 without shipping — but the next hold up was finding someone to construct the building. “All the contractors have their own work to do, and summertime, they are busy as can be. So no one wants to give up their time to work on that house,” Lenharr said.
By a stroke of luck or good will from the algorithm, Lenharr was on Facebook when he came across Johnathan Hayes, owner and operator of Poland Spring Seppala Kennels in Maine, who is planning an centennial expedition celebrating the 1925 Serum Run. Hayes, passionate about Seppala and all things husky, agreed to bring a team of volunteer contractors to Nome to work on the house.
For one week in August, six Mainers and one Oregonian made their way to Nome to construct an updated version of the Seppala House and experience life on the opposite end of the continent.
Fueled by his passion for Seppala, Hayes rounded up a crew consisting of his children and contractors he knew from the area. Enchanted by tales of the last frontier they took three plane rides to Nome where they began the project by taking apart the old Seppala House.
During the deconstruction of the old home, the crew discovered it was a prefabricated build with boards and beams designed to slip into each other for easy construction. Hayes found an inscription that designated it a product of the Alaska Portable House Company, which according to the Pacific Coast Architecture Database, was a Seattle based manufacturing company.
Soon the dismantling turned to treasure hunting when the group found, behind layers of walls, old photos and newspaper clippings that were plastered across boards.
“Everything in the house that we found had dates on it from 1870 to 1890s, nothing over 1900,” Hayes said.
Excited by their finds, the crew set out to incorporate the old boards into the new build.
They were determined to make the most of the nice days ahead, some rain-soaked but such is life in Nome, often putting in 12 hours a day to get the job done.
Hard work aside, what they really wanted to chat about when the Nome Nugget visited their worksite at the dump on their last full day in town was how much they loved Nome and the Seward Peninsula.
“None of us want to leave,” Hayes said. In time off they visited the Last Train to Nowhere, enjoyed a meal of Native foods presented by members of Covenant Church and made it out to Pilgrim Hot Springs for an unforgettable soak.
The crew relayed how they were met with hospitality and appreciation everywhere they went during their time here and were emphatic about returning to at least Alaska if not Nome.
Now the house is almost complete, needing siding before its ready for winter but Lenharr was overcome with emotions over the progress made by the guys this summer.
“They sent me pictures, I started crying because they actually had the floor done and a wall put up. And I’m going, oh my goodness, it’s going to be a reality. It’s going to be finished,” Lenharr said.

Once the build is done, Lenharr will turn ownership of the house over to the city so it can be developed it into a museum space. Thompson has already begun working to preserve the photos pulled from behind the walls of the house and is excited to have a display that can focus on the wild history of dog mushing in Nome.