On March 30, 1867, U.S. Secretary of State William Seward stayed up almost all night negotiating with Russia's ambassador, Eduard de Stoeckl. By 4 a.m., they had signed a treaty in which Russia agreed to sell its huge American territory - a frozen, mountainous, fish-and-bear-filled land - to the United States for $7.2 million. That worked out to about two cents per acre for 586,000 square miles. Russia was happy to sell. The territory was hard to defend, expensive to govern, and the fur trade that had made it valuable was slowing down.
Many Americans thought Seward was bonkers. Newspapers called the purchase "Seward's Folly" and "Seward's Icebox," mocking him for buying a giant frozen wasteland. The mockery didn't last long. In 1896, gold was discovered in the Klondike region, sparking a stampede of prospectors. Soon Alaska was also delivering huge amounts of salmon, timber, and copper. Then in 1968, vast oil fields were found at Prudhoe Bay. Today the original purchase price would buy roughly one tank of jet fuel - a comically tiny amount compared to the value of what the U.S. got.
Alaska became the 49th state in 1959. It's bigger than Texas, California, and Montana combined, has 17 of the 20 tallest mountains in the U.S., and contains over 100,000 glaciers. Less than a million people live there, but it's home to grizzly bears, moose, beluga whales, and the northern lights dancing across winter skies. Seward's "folly" turned out to be one of the greatest real-estate deals in history - a midnight signing that, two cents at a time, doubled the wild and beautiful corners of America.
