Russia sold Alaska to the United States in 1867.
The agreement was signed on March 30, 1867, and the United States paid $7.2 million. Secretary of State William H. Seward negotiated the purchase for President Andrew Johnson’s administration. The transfer ceremony took place at Sitka on October 18, 1867, a date now observed as Alaska Day.
At the time, critics mocked the deal as “Seward’s Folly” or “Seward’s Icebox,” because many Americans saw Alaska as remote and economically unpromising. Later discoveries of gold, oil, and other resources changed public perceptions of the territory’s value.
Alaska did not immediately become a state. It became an organized territory in 1912 and joined the Union as the 49th state on January 3, 1959. Its purchase from Russia is a distinct event from the Louisiana Purchase, another expansion milestone associated with the broader history remembered by America250.