On October 18, 1867, the United States formally took possession of the Alaska Territory. This land, which comprised almost 600,000 square miles, was purchased by the United States from Russia for 7.2 million dollars or less than two cents an acre. Russia had wanted to sell this vast land for some time as it was sparsely populated, remote, and extremely difficult to defend. America’s Secretary of State, William H. Seward, was a constant champion of the purchase, insisting that America had gotten an extraordinary deal. The American people were not so sure however, and many people began referring to the purchase of the remote, barren territory as “Seward’s Folly.” Public opinion would drastically change in 1896, when gold was discovered in Alaska’s Klondike River. Today, Alaska is even more valuable thanks to its many natural resources, supplying the country with twenty-five percent of its oil and fifty percent of its seafood.
Posted on: Fri, 18 Oct 2013 22:58:22 +0000
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