Alaska Was Bought For 2c An Acre

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31500, 14 October 1967, Page 5

Alaska Was Bought For 2c An Acre

staJT’ ST 9 RY

(Specialty written for "The'

Press” by

KENNETH ANTHONY)

This stamp provides a reminder of an episode when American dollar diplomacy ousted the Russians from North America. - Nowadays few people realise that Russia ever had any North American possessions at all. But for more than 100 years the large territory at the north-western tip of the continent, now known as Alaska, was ruled by the Tsars. Alaska was discovered in 1741 by Vitus Behring, the Danish navigator, who claimed it for Russia. But by 1867 Tsar Alexander II had lost interest in this furthest-flung of his dominions, and after years of neglect agreed to sell it to the United States. The price ' paid was SU.S. 7,2oo,ooo—which works out at about two cents an acre. At that figure it must be ranked among the word’s greatest bargains. But even so there were at the time many Americans who thought their nation had been overcharged for a desolate Arctic wasteland. Such was the „ mounting opposition that the Secretary of State, Mr William H. , Seward, who negotiated the deal with the Russian's, had to rush the treaty through the Senate at . ,a special session. Presumably, the critics changed their tune some years later . when the Klondyke gold rush developed. Gold is still mined in Alaska today, add

there are valuable forestry and fishery industries. There must have been many occasions later when the Russians regretted their hasty sale. But in the light of subsequent events,. and especially the cold-war period after the last war, Americans With a sense of history have been glad that there was no land frontier between Russia aha Canada. ■ Meantime, in 1942, Alaska’s strategic importance was recognised by the construction of the 1500-mile Alaskan highway, which links the territory with the rest Of the United States. At the beginning of 1959, Alaska became the 49th State of the United States of Aimerica. In area, it is also the largest. But although the population trebled in the 20 years from (940, it still works out at nearly three square miles a person! To mark the centenary of the purchase; America has issued the 8c airmail stamp illustrated here. The design is based ', on an old Indian totem pole that can now be seen at the Alaska State Museum in the. capital of ‘Juneau.