We have it, alright.
Putin may want it back, but it has been ours for a long time.
Alaska.
Here’s something. Alaska has the lowest population density in the nation. But you probably knew that. Here’s how low, though. If Manhattan, New York, had the same population density as Alaska? There would only be 16 people living in all of Manhattan. That’s empty.
So, it was on this date, March 30, 1867, that the United States bought Alaska. But most people don’t know the back story. It really wasn’t our idea. Russian WANTED to sell it to us, and here is why.
First of all. Russia claimed that territory in the 17th century. Russians had expanded to the east across their country, all the way through Siberia. Eventually, and inevitably, they crossed the Bering Strait and established a presence in the northern Americas. But, at that time, during the 1600s, very few Russians moved there.
Okay. Now. Let’s jump forward to the 1800s.
Russian had been in a war — the Crimean War. And they lost. They were fighting against Britain and also France. Anyway, the Russian Tsar Alexander II began looking for ways to sell Alaska to America. Smart guy, really. This was because Britain held Canada as a colony at that time. So if he sold Alaska to the United States, it would be impossible for Britain to attack Russia from the Canadian side. The old block-a-roo.
I’m not sure how many times they offered it up for us. But Russia first approached the United States about the idea of this big sale during the administration of President James Buchanan. The wheels were slow to turn. And negotiations were stalled by the outbreak of the Civil War.
Then came along U.S. Secretary of State William H. Seward. He was big on the idea of buying this tremendous landmass of Alaska. I mean, size-wise, it is an area roughly one-fifth the size of the rest of the United States.
He met resistance along the way. Finally, though, the Senate ratified the treaty on April 9, 1867.
The total cost was $7 million. Or, to put it in other terms, we bought that land for a little bit of nothing. The cost of the land was around two cents per acre. Despite the bargain bin prices, the deal was ridiculed in Congress and in the press. They called it things like “Seward’s Folly,” “Seward’s Icebox,” and the “Polar Bear Garden.”
Alaska would not be admitted as a state to the Union until 1959.
It is our 49th state and is home to some of the most impressive scenery in our country, with huge glaciers, mirror-like lakes, large expanses of land, incredible mountains, and amazing wildlife.
Here are two more things you should know in case you plan on visiting.
Kodiak bears can weigh 1,500 pounds. They can be 10 feet tall standing on their hind legs. Moose can grow to 1,600 pounds. Their antlers may span up to 6 feet wide. These dudes are everywhere up there.
Alaska. “North to the Future” is their motto. They say.
So yes, America bought Alaska 156 years ago today. I just hope Putin doesn’t get it in his head that it still belongs to Russia. I mean, he did this with Ukraine, so I wouldn’t put it past him.
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“A true conservationist is a man who knows that the world is not given by his fathers, but borrowed from his children.”
― John James Audubon
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“We need the tonic of wildness…At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden: Or, Life in the Woods
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“There is no exquisite beauty… without some strangeness in the proportion.”
― Edgar Allan Poe
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We bought the big, big icebox, we did.
