Travel YMT blog

Beginning in the early 1700s during Peter the Great’s reign, Vitus Jonassen Bering (see his biography posted under the “People” section on this Blog) explored the enormous territory across what is now known as Bering Straight from Russia. Although Russia established the area as their possession, it was never a profitable venture for them. In the late 1850s, Russia was in a difficult financial position. They were involved in the Crimean War with Great Britain, and feared losing their Alaska territory either to the British, or to U.S. expansion (in much the same way Mexico had during the Mexican-American War).

Under the philosophy, “Better to sell it than loose it,” Tsar Alexander II sent one of his ministers, Baron Edouard de Stoeckl, to Washington with instructions to sell the territory to the U.S. government. Stoeckl began negotiating with President Buchanan, but talks halted abruptly when the American Civil War broke out.

After the war, negotiations re-opened. William H. Seward, secretary of state under presidents Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson, was an avid expansionist. He was committed to the philosophy of spreading U.S. influence throughout the Pacific to enhance America’s trade and military standing.

Seward was so eager to acquire Alaska he actually began negotiations with the Stoeckl before getting President Johnson’s official authorization. The negotiations concluded in an all-night negotiating session, and all parties finally signed the treaty at 4:00 a.m. on March 30, 1867. The United States had officially bought Alaska—for $7,200,000!

That hurdle crossed, Seward now had one last obstacle: get the Senate to ratify the treaty. To do that, he had to convince the Senate that Alaska would be a significant benefit to the United States. This task proved to be very difficult, but on April 9, 1867 the upper house ratified the treaty—by just one vote!

On August 1, 1868, the U.S. issued a check for $7,200,000.00, 000 (equivalent to about US $1.67 billion 2006 dollars) to Edouard de Stoeckl. That’s about 2.5 cents per acre for 600,000 square miles—more than twice the size of Texas! (Alaska is bigger than Texas, California and Montana combined!) The deal was a perfect marriage—Russia needed to dump something that was too expensive for them to keep, and the U.S. agreed to buy it to jump start amicable relations with the czarist country.

Popular opinion ran high against the acquiring Alaska, and the press skewered Seward for making it happen. They scathingly called the newly acquired “wasteland” “Seward’s Folly,” “Seward’s Icebox” and even “Johnson’s Polar Bear Garden.” The tide quickly changed, however, in the 1890s, when gold was discovered in the Canadian Klondike. People thronged to Alaska and started mining gold near Dawson.

Just as the discovery of gold in the late 1890s increased Alaska's value to the U.S., Alaska has further boosted U.S. economy with its abundant natural resources: petroleum, natural gas, coal, timber and salmon. In 1912, the region was granted territorial status, and became the 49th state on January 3, 1959. Today, Alaskans observe “Seward’s Day” on the last Monday of March to commemorate the purchase of “Seward’s Folly.”

Time-wise, Alaska is so far west that the International Date Line had to be bent just to keep the state all in the same day! It's also the only U.S. state extending into the Eastern Hemisphere.