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Today in History: The Alaska Purchase
03/30/10
On March 30, 1867, U.S. Secretary of State William Seward signed an agreement to purchase Alaska from Russia for $7.2 million, thus expanding the land area of the United States by 20 percent. Since Alaska consisted mostly of unexplored wilderness at the time, the purchase announcement was greeted with skepticism by the public and was ridiculed in the media as “Seward’s folly.” Although the U.S. Senate ratified the treaty with Russia on April 9, 1867, it took more than a year to appropriate the funds to pay for the land. Alaska’s true worth did not become clear until the 1890s, when the discovery of gold first revealed its wealth of natural resources. In 1959 Alaska became the nation’s 49th state.
Read the AGREEMENT TO PURCHASE ALASKA