The Alaskan Purchase and the Rise of America's Arctic Frontier (1867–1959)
The United States' 1867 purchase of Alaska from Russia, widely mocked at the time as "Seward's Folly," transformed over the following century into one of the most consequential land deals in history, delivering gold rushes, a strategic Pacific and Arctic military frontier, and eventually the 49th state.
Events
The Treaty of Cession
Secretary of State William Seward signed the Treaty of Cession with Russian envoy Eduard de Stoeckl on March 30, 1867, purchasing Alaska, some 1.5 million square kilometers (586,000 square miles) of territory, for 7.2 million dollars, about two cents per acre. Russia, financially strained after the Crimean War and fearing the territory would be seized by Britain in a future war, sought the sale. The US Senate ratified the treaty on April 9, 1867, by a vote of 37 to 2.
Location: Washington, D.C., USA
"Seward's Icebox" and the Transfer at Sitka
The formal transfer ceremony took place at Sitka on October 18, 1867, with Russian and American troops firing salutes and the flag changing hands. The American press largely ridiculed the purchase as "Seward's Icebox," "Seward's Folly," and "Andrew Johnson's polar bear garden," viewing the territory as a frozen wasteland. Much of the American public and press questioned the price until the territory's mineral wealth later became apparent.
Location: Sitka, Alaska, USA
The Klondike Gold Rush
When the gold ships Excelsior and Portland reached San Francisco and Seattle in July 1897 carrying Klondike gold, one of the great gold rushes in history began. Around 100,000 stampeders set out for the Yukon, most entering through the Alaskan ports of Skagway and Dyea and crossing the Chilkoot or White Pass. The rush briefly made Skagway Alaska's largest town and cemented Seattle's rise as the Pacific Northwest's commercial capital.
Location: Skagway and Dyea, Alaska, USA
The Alaska Boundary Dispute Settled
The Alaska-Canada boundary dispute over the panhandle's fjord coastline, unresolved since the purchase, went to arbitration under the 1903 Hay-Herbert Treaty. The tribunal's British member, Lord Alverstone, cast the deciding vote for the American position, giving the United States a coastline access route to the Klondike and leaving Canadian negotiators embittered. The outcome is credited with spurring Canadian interest in pursuing its own independent foreign policy.
Location: London, United Kingdom
War Comes to the Aleutians and the Alaska Highway
Japanese forces occupied the islands of Attu and Kiska in June 1942, the only occupation of North American soil by a foreign power during World War II, in part to obscure their Midway operations. American and Canadian forces retook Attu in May 1943 at heavy cost and found Kiska abandoned that August. The threat also drove the construction of the Alaska Highway, roughly 2,700 kilometers (1,700 miles) from Dawson Creek to Fairbanks, built in about eight months in 1942 by civilian and military crews.
Location: Attu Island, Alaska, USA
Alaska Becomes the 49th State
Alaska was admitted to the Union as the 49th state on January 3, 1959, after decades in which its residents, denied territorial representation in Congress, pressed for self-government, and after statehood advocates argued the territory was too strategically important to remain a colony. President Eisenhower signed the proclamation. Alaska's statehood, alongside Hawaii's later that year, marked the first expansion of the Union since 1912 and completed the incorporation of the territory once ridiculed as a folly.
Location: Washington, D.C., USA
Prudhoe Bay and the Trans-Alaska Pipeline
The discovery of the Prudhoe Bay oil field on the North Slope in March 1968, later confirmed as the largest oil field in North America, transformed the purchase's economic meaning. The 1,288-kilometer (800-mile) Trans-Alaska Pipeline, completed in 1977 after battles over Native land claims settled by the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, made Alaska a pillar of US energy supply. Oil revenues funded the Alaska Permanent Fund, the state's sovereign wealth vehicle established in 1976.
Location: Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, USA
ANILCA and the Conservation of a Frontier
The Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980, signed by President Carter, set aside more than 42 million hectares (104 million acres) of Alaska as parks, refuges, and conservation areas, more than doubling the size of the US national park and refuge systems. The act followed years of conflict between development, Native, and conservation interests and fixed the modern balance between Alaska's extractive economy and its role as the continent's largest wilderness.
Location: Alaska, USA