March 30

March 30, 1867
Seward's Folly
On this day in 1867, the U.S. Senate purchased the territory of Alaska from the Russian Empire for the sum of 2 cents per acre or $7.2 million - approximately $110 million in 2009 dollars. Russian knew the territory as Alyeska, the "great land", an Aleut word. The Russians never Alaska and William H. Seward, the U.S. Secretary of State, negotiated the Alaskan purchase which came to be known as Seward's Folly. The purchase was intended to provide the United States with a strategic position against British expansion in Canada. In the 1890s, the discovery of gold in Alaska brought tens of thousands of settlers to Alaska. Alaska became a state on January 3, 1959.