Gunnar Kaasen (March 11, 1882 – November 27, 1960) was a Norwegian-born musher who delivered a cylinder containing 300,000 units of diphtheria antitoxin to Nome, Alaska, in 1925, as the last leg of a dog sled relay that saved the U.S. city from an epidemic.

While the boom was spent by 1905, the port of Nome sits on Norton Sound, which is usually ice locked and inaccessible by ship between October and June.

In 1925, an outbreak of diphtheria threatened Kaasen's adopted home, and the disease could easily spread across the northern Alaska villages of which Nome was the hub.

[3] Kaasen was scheduled to transport the 20 pound (9 kg) cylinder of serum along the next-to-last leg of the relay, from Bluff to Point Safety, Alaska.

At Bluff, Charlie Olson passed the serum to Kaasen, who left with a team of 13 dogs, led by the husky, Balto.

Ed Rohn, the next musher in the relay, was sleeping, so Kaasen pressed on the remaining 25 miles (40 km) to Nome, reaching Front Street at 5:30 AM.

Although news sources promoted the idea that this was a statue of Balto, his name does not appear on the dedication plaque, but instead reads, "Dedicated to the indomitable spirit of the sled dogs that relayed antitoxin six hundred miles over rough ice, across treacherous waters, through Arctic blizzards from Nenana to the relief of stricken Nome in the Winter of 1925.