The Alaska Purchase: 1867 Treaty, the Sitka Transfer and Alaska Day

On a mid-October day in Sitka, the streets fill with people in nineteenth-century dress, and a ceremony recalls the moment the Russian flag came down and the American flag went up. Travelers who stumble into it often ask how a state this large came to belong to the United States at all. The short answer is a treaty with Russia, signed in 1867 and sealed in Sitka, and it still shapes how Alaskans mark the calendar.

What was the Alaska Purchase?

The Alaska Purchase was the deal by which the United States bought Alaska from Russia in 1867, a treaty signed in Washington, D.C. on March 30. The price was US$7.2 million, and in return the country gained 586,412 square miles of land. Critics at the time mocked the bargain as ‘Seward’s Folly’, after the secretary of state who pushed it through.

Behind the nickname is a simple idea: many Americans of the day could not see why anyone would pay for a faraway territory of ice and forest. Today the jokes read as the opposite of the truth. The land includes Denali, at 20,310 feet the highest mountain in North America, and Tongass National Forest, the largest national forest in the country.

The key dates at a glance

Several dates cluster around the purchase, and they are easy to mix up when you stand in front of a museum label.

What the land became

Nearly all the Russian settlers left after the purchase, and Alaska stayed sparsely populated until the Klondike Gold Rush began in 1896. Miners and prospectors then climbed the Chilkoot Trail, and the territory slowly filled with new arrivals.

Getting around the huge new territory took decades of building. The Alaska Railroad, begun in 1902, connected Seward to Fairbanks by 1914, and the Alaska Marine Highway System was completed in 1963. Even now Juneau, the capital, has no road link to the rest of the North American highway system, and only Haines, Hyder and Skagway connect directly to it. Other Southeast Alaska communities depend on the ferries.

When and from whom did the United States buy Alaska?

The United States bought Alaska from Russia in 1867, with the treaty signed on March 30 and the purchase for US$7.2 million dated August 1. American sovereignty became legally effective across Alaska on October 18, 1867, the day of the handover in Sitka.

The handover in Sitka

The transfer ceremony from Russia to the United States took place in Sitka on October 18, 1867, at what was then called New Archangel (Novoarkhangelsk). The town was small, with 116 log cabins and 968 residents. After the purchase it was renamed Sitka and became the first capital of Alaska Territory.

One detail Alaskans like to repeat is that residents lived through two Fridays in a row because of calendar changes tied to the transfer. Russia had used a different calendar from the American one, so the date had to shift as the territory changed hands. It is a small, human footnote to a diplomatic event.

A territory of small settlements

Sitka was not the only settlement that changed flags. The town of St. Paul in the Pribilof Islands had 100 homes and 283 residents in 1867. Together these places give a sense of how thinly settled the new territory was, a long way from the cities of the contiguous states.

Over the following years the capital moved. Under the Second Organic Act of 1912, the capital of the Territory of Alaska was Juneau, and it remained the capital when Alaska became a state. Sitka, where the flags changed, is remembered as the first seat of government.

From purchase to statehood

The road from purchase to statehood took nearly a century. Alaskans passed a statehood referendum in 1946 by a 3:2 vote, and a Constitutional Convention met at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks in 1955. Voters approved the Alaska Constitution in 1956.

In a special election on August 26, 1958, 40,452 Alaskans voted for immediate admission to the Union, with 8,010 against. President Dwight D. Eisenhower had signed the Alaska Statehood Act on July 7, 1958, and Alaska became the 49th state on January 3, 1959.

How is it remembered today?

The purchase is remembered above all on Alaska Day, October 18, a legal holiday that commemorates the formal transfer from Russia to the United States at Fort Sitka in 1867. It is a holiday for all state workers in Alaska, so the day carries a real mark on the calendar, and Sitka is where it feels most vivid.

Alaska Day in Sitka

Sitka is the natural place to be on October 18, since the transfer ceremony happened there. The town has long marked the anniversary with a festival, and residents take part in period costume and a reenactment of the flag change. If your trip falls in mid-October, it is the moment when the history on the museum walls steps out into the street.

Even outside the holiday, Sitka keeps the story close. A sign from the statehood campaign is displayed in the Sitka Historical Museum, a reminder that the town stood at both ends of Alaska’s political journey, the handover in 1867 and the push for statehood in the twentieth century.

The nickname and the verdict of history

‘Seward’s Folly’ survives as a joke, but the verdict has turned. The Klondike Gold Rush brought thousands north by the late 1890s, and Alaska later gained a railroad, a ferry system and finally statehood. Modern Alaska draws more than 1.4 million visitors each year, and tourism is an important source of revenue.

What those visitors come for sits inside the bargain of 1867. They come for Denali, for the Tongass, for Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the world’s largest wildlife refuge at 16 million acres, and for Utqiaġvik, the northernmost city in the United States. Turnagain Arm, just south of Anchorage, adds tides of more than 35 feet, among the largest in the world.

Other chapters Alaskans remember

The purchase is the first chapter of a longer story, and later events are remembered just as seriously. The Good Friday earthquake struck South-central Alaska on March 27, 1964 at a magnitude of 9.2, killing 139 people and destroying towns including Valdez and Chenega. On March 24, 1989, the Exxon Valdez ran aground in Prince William Sound and spilled 11 million gallons of crude oil along 1,100 miles of shoreline.

In the 1930s, President Franklin D. Roosevelt allowed 1,000 selected farmers hurt by the Depression to move to the Matanuska-Susitna Valley, another thread in how the territory was settled. Seen together, these stories explain why Alaskans treat history as something lived in place names, anniversaries and museums.

Good to know before you go

Alaska Day falls on October 18, and it is a holiday for state workers, so expect government offices to be closed that day. Sitka is the town to choose if you want to see the anniversary where it happened, and a visit to the Sitka Historical Museum fits well alongside it. Because Juneau has no road link to the rest of the North American highway system, the Alaska Marine Highway is part of how many Southeast Alaska communities connect.