On This Day in 1959, Alaska—One of America’s Riskiest Investments—Became the 49th State in the Union

America’s largest state—encompassing mountains, coasts, lakes and tundra—captures about $5.6 billion in tourism spending each year. Alaska is a gold mine, rich in natural resources like petroleum, seafood and literal gold.

But the state, which became the United States’ 49th on this day in 1959, wasn’t always considered a worthwhile investment.

When U.S. Secretary of State William Seward purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867, he negotiated a price of $7.2 million—about $153 million today—for almost 600,000 square miles of territory: less than 2 cents per acre. His big get was immediately dubbed “Seward’s Folly.”

“Russia has sold us a sucked orange!” announced the New York World. As another critic wondered, what use did America have for a land covered with “glaciers, icebergs, bears and walruses?”

Russia had conquered Alaska back in the 18th century, during an era of expansion spearheaded by Peter I. In 1733, Peter ordered an ambitious exploration of eastern Siberia and the northern Pacific Ocean called the Great Northern Expedition. By 1741, Russian naval explorers had arrived at the east coast of Siberia, crossed the sea and found a new land: Alaska. The Russians quickly realized the territory’s potential contribution to the Siberian fur trade, given its thriving population of sea otters.

Soon, Siberian fur traders were trapping and harvesting pelts in the Aleutian Islands and around the island of Kodiak off Alaska’s southern coast. They were brutal to Alaska’s Indigenous population, harming and threatening the Aleut and Alutiiq peoples who had lived there for millennia. During the following decades, Russians engaged in constant conflict with Alaskan Natives, especially the Tlingit. By the mid-19th century—amid other conflicts with European nations—Russia was looking to sell. When the United States bought the territory, it ended Russia’s 125-year hold on North American soil.

“Seward’s Icebox,” as Alaska was also called, was among a string of 19th-century American acquisitions. In the 1840s, the U.S. had expanded into Oregon, Texas and California. Seward was all for the stretching of the country, in accordance with “Manifest Destiny,” the idea that white Americans were fated to expand westward and spread democracy. Acquiring Alaska would mean additional American strength in the West. As Seward wrote in 1848, “Our population is destined to roll resistless waves to the ice barriers of the north, and to encounter oriental civilization on the shores of the Pacific.”

Still, though the U.S. acquired Alaska in 1867, it didn’t become a state until 1959. The century in between saw the territory develop from a sparsely populated region into a place Americans traveled and lived. In 1896, the discovery of gold in the Klondike—near today’s Glacier Bay National Park in Southeast Alaska—brought a wave of gold-seekers to the territory. The profit soared from there, and by the mid-20th century, Congress was regularly introducing bills that would make Alaska a state.

During the Cold War, Americans called Alaska the “Guardian of the North” and the “Top Cover for America” because of its proximity to the Soviet Union. President Dwight D. Eisenhower saw Alaska’s potential statehood as a risk in this sense: If it were made a state, Alaska would bring the nation that much closer to its enemy.

Nonetheless, Eisenhower signed legislation making Alaska a state on July 7, 1958. On January 3, 1959, Alaska was officially admitted as the 49th state. That same year, Hawaii would become the 50th.

As Smithsonian reported in 2017, “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.” Today, it’s one of only nine U.S. states to forgo statewide earned income taxes. But Alaska is perhaps best known for its pristine wilderness. In 1980, the state gained an enormous public lands system thanks to the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act. More than 100 million acres of Alaskan land are now preserved—protected as national treasures in a state once considered a bad investment.

Sonja Anderson | READ MORE

Sonja Anderson is a writer and reporter based in New York City.