Bets on Ice

Everyone knew the big day had come. The excitement even awakened the Male-mutes that snooze on the boardwalk before the town's false-front stores. There was open water under the big railroad bridge half a mile upstream; that meant the Tanana River jam was breaking.

The roar could be heard for several miles, as huge cakes of ice broke apart, flapped up, stood on edge, ground into each other, crashed and thundered. Most of the 300 citizens (mostly Indians) of Nenana, Alaska, made for the river, to watch a fragile candy-striped tripod anchored in the ice. There was $125,000 riding on that little pole, in bets from soldiers and sourdoughs all over Alaska.

At 2:08 p.m. it happened. The candy-striped tripod spun over, crushed like a matchstick. It was payoff time in Alaska's famed Nenana Ice Pool, the world's biggest gamble on an Act of God.

"TANANA ICE BREAKS" gets blacker type in the Fairbanks News-Miner than a 2,000-plane raid on Germany. The Ice Pool is big business. Since it is a lottery and cannot use the mails, ballots are flown or mushed by dog team to remote settlements. Since February, as for 27 years past, thousands of Alaskans have guessed the day, hour and minute that the ice would break, backed their hunches at $1 a throw. Last week eleven tickets (at $10,000 each) tied for the winning minute.

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