The United States purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867.
Secretary of State William H. Seward negotiated the agreement with Russian minister Eduard de Stoeckl. The treaty was signed on March 30, 1867, for $7.2 million, or about two cents per acre. The formal transfer ceremony took place at Sitka on October 18, 1867, a date now observed as Alaska Day.
Russia sold the territory partly because it feared losing Alaska to Britain in a future conflict and found the distant colony difficult to administer. Seward supported expansion into the Pacific and viewed Alaska as strategically and economically valuable. Critics initially mocked the transaction as “Seward’s Folly” or “Seward’s Icebox.”
The purchase did not immediately make Alaska a state. It became an organized territory in 1912 and was admitted to the Union as the 49th state on January 3, 1959. Alaska is the largest U.S. state by area and remains separated from the contiguous United States by Canada.