How much was alaska bought for

The surviving crew fixed the ship, stocked it full of hundreds of the sea otters, foxes and fur seals that were abundant there and returned to Siberia, impressing Russian fur hunters with their valuable cargo. This prompted something akin to the Klondike gold rush years later. Russians in Alaska — who numbered no more than at their peak — faced the reality of being half a globe away from St.

Petersburg, then the capital of the empire, making communications a key problem. Also, Alaska was too far north to allow for significant agriculture and therefore unfavorable as a place to send large numbers of settlers.

They sent ships to what is now California, established trade relations with the Spaniards there and eventually set up their own settlement at Fort Ross in Not long after, the Russians began to seriously question whether they could continue their Alaskan colony as well.

For starters, the colony was no longer profitable after the sea otter population was decimated. Then there was the fact that Alaska was difficult to defend and Russia was short on cash due to the costs of the war in Crimea. In the s, the United States had expanded its interests to Oregon, annexed Texas, fought a war with Mexico and acquired California. Afterward, Secretary of State Seward wrote in March Almost 20 years after expressing his thoughts about expansion into the Arctic, Seward accomplished his goal.

In Alaska, the Americans foresaw a potential for gold, fur and fisheries, as well as more trade with China and Japan. The Americans worried that England might try to establish a presence in the territory, and the acquisition of Alaska — it was believed — would help the U.

Just in terms of wealth, the U. Hundreds of billions of dollars in whale oil, fur, copper, gold, timber, fish, platinum, zinc, lead and petroleum have been produced in Alaska over the years — allowing the state to do without a sales or income tax and give every resident an annual stipend. Alaska still likely has billions of barrels of oil reserves. There were 17, alone on the Aleutian Islands. Despite the relatively small number of Russians who at any one time lived at one of their settlements — mostly on the Aleutians Islands, Kodiak, Kenai Peninsula and Sitka — they ruled over the native populations in their areas with an iron hand, taking children of the leaders as hostages, destroying kayaks and other hunting equipment to control the men and showing extreme force when necessary.

The Russians brought with them weaponry such as firearms, swords, cannons and gunpowder, which helped them secure a foothold in Alaska along the southern coast. Only days earlier, an announcement was made that Ono was pregnant, creating a scandal because both Lennon and Ono On October 18, , the American philosopher-inventor R. Buckminster Fuller applies for a patent for his Dymaxion Car. On October 18, , Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon complete their survey of the boundary between the colonies of Pennsylvania and Maryland as well as areas that would eventually become the states of Delaware and West Virginia.

The Penn and Calvert families had hired Mason and After joining the BEF in , Farr was sent to the front in Live TV. This Day In History. History Vault. US Government.

United States. Sign Up. Art, Literature, and Film History. The purchase of Alaska in marked the end of Russian efforts to expand trade and settlements to the Pacific coast of North America, and became an important step in the United States rise as a great power in the Asia-Pacific region.

Beginning in , when Russian Czar Peter the Great dispatched Vitus Bering to explore the Alaskan coast, Russia had a keen interest in this region, which was rich in natural resources and lightly inhabited. As the United States expanded westward in the early s, Americans soon found themselves in competition with Russian explorers and traders.

Petersburg, however, lacked the financial resources to support major settlements or a military presence along the Pacific coast of North America and permanent Russian settlers in Alaska never numbered more than four hundred. Defeat in the Crimean War further reduced Russian interest in this region.