How Alaska came to be

13,000 to 15,000 years ago

The first small bands of Stone Age human hunters walk across what was, at the time, a land bridge from eastern Siberia to North America and work their way into the heart of the continent.

1580

Cossacks from Russia invade territory ruled by the Khan of Siberia, beginning a process that will eventually result in Russia controlling all of Siberia by the late 1600s.

1741

Explorer Vitus Bering leads the first Russian expedition to land east of the Bering Strait and claims the land there for the czar. Shortly after, Russian fur traders begin operating in Alaska.

1784

The first permanent Russian colonial settlers move into Alaska. Over the next 125 or so years, Russian settlers cut the native population there in half.

1856

Russia is defeated by the United Kingdom, France, the Ottoman Empire and their allies in the Crimean War. Drained of money and military resources, the czar looks at Alaska as a luxury his country can no longer afford and approaches Sen. William H. Seward about purchasing “Russian America.” Those talks become sidelined by the Civil War.

March 11, 1867

With the U.S. dealing with the aftermath of the

war, Seward — now the nation’s secretary of state, serving President Andrew Johnson — brings up a possible purchase with Russia’s minister to the U.S., Edouard de Stoeckl. The Russians are delighted. Top-secret meetings begin.

March 30, 1867

After an all-night session of negotiations, Seward and Stoeckl sign a treaty at 4 a.m. stipulating the U.S. would buy Alaska for $7.2 million in gold — less than 2¢ an acre. Seward naively hopes the Senate will ratify the treaty that day.

That doesn’t happen. A group of vocal politicians known as the Radical Republicans, who are taking out their frustrations with post-civil War Reconstruction by opposing anything that comes out of the Johnson administration — label the purchase as “Seward’s Folly.” Sen. William Fessenden of Maine says at one point he’d vote for the deal only if the legislation stipulates “that the secretary of state be compelled to live” in Alaska.

April 9, 1867

Despite the political bluster — and the thunder of bad press in Horace Greeley’s New York World — the treaty easily passes the Senate, 37-2.

Oct. 18, 1867

The U.S. officially takes possession of Alaska.

September 1899

Gold is discovered near Nome. The Klondike gold rush to Yukon, Canada, expands into Alaska.

1924

The Indian Citizenship Act becomes law, meaning Alaska’s native population can no longer be denied U.S. citizenship.

1946

By a 3-to-2 margin, residents of Alaska vote to pursue statehood.

Jan. 3, 1959

Alaska officially becomes the nation’s 49th state.