Today in History—March 30: Why the U.S. Bought Alaska—When No One Else Wanted It

On this day—barely, it was about 4 AM, after an all-nighter negotiating session—in 1867, U.S. Secretary of State William H. Seward struck a deal with a Russian envoy: The United States would purchase Alaska from Russia for $7.2 million. (That’d be almost $160 million today.)

This decision was derided. The press called it Pres. Andrew Johnson’s “polar bear garden” and “Seward’s icebox.” After all, Russia had been trying to unload the territory since before the Civil War. (Seward had served as secretary of state under Pres. Abraham Lincoln, too.)

Russia had advanced across Siberia into Alaska centuries before. Trappers and hunters decimated sea otters, foxes, fur seals, and Alaska Native populations: In the century of Russian settlement, the population of Alaska Native peoples fell by half. By the time the United States began eyeing the territory, only 50,000 remained. Despite these losses, Alaska Native communities maintained their cultures, languages, and traditions, first under Russian colonization and then—spoiler alert—in the upheaval of U.S. governance.

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After losing the Crimean War to Great Britain and falling into debt, Russia deemed Alaska more trouble than it was worth. How could they defend the remote, frozen expanse if the British tried to take it?

Negotiations with the United States picked back up after the Civil War, and Seward, a proponent of American expansion, smelled a bargain. He defended the purchase before the U.S. Senate, then wined and dined critics and undecided congressmen at his Washington home, waxing poetic about the beauty of Russian Alaska.

The Senate approved the deal the following month, but it took another year for the House of Representatives to sign off, and hemming and hawing meant the check wasn’t cashed until August 1, 1868.

The United States largely ignored its new territory until the Klondike Gold Rush began in 1896, turning Alaska into a direct path to the Yukon. Tens of thousands of prospectors flocked there from across the country.

By the time the gold rush flamed out, more than $50 million had been mined—enough to justify the purchase many times over and silence Seward’s critics. And that was only the beginning: Alaska’s forests, fisheries, and oil wealth would turn Seward’s folly into one very profitable icebox.