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After nearly a century as a military district and incorporated territory, Alaska became the United States' 49th state on January 3, 1959. Americans initially considered the purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867 to be a folly, as Secretary of State William H. Seward paid $7.2 million—approximately 2 cents an acre—for desolate land mockingly referred to as "Seward's icebox" and President Andrew Johnson's "Polar Bear Garden." Ridicule subsided once news of Alaska's natural resources and mineral wealth spread. Today, Alaska is home to a hardy population of 733,391 living in urban cities and remote settlements surrounded by 665,588 square miles of rugged mountains, roaring rivers, ancient glaciers, and flowering grasslands.
Russian explorers and traders were likely the first Europeans to arrive in Alaska as early as the 1640s. Spanish expeditions arrived in the 1770s as the nation sought to assert its claims to the North America's Pacific Northwest. Eighteenth century Spanish expeditions in Alaska led to the naming of present-day Valdez and Cordova, AK. In 1799, Russia sponsored the Russian-American Company to explore and colonize Alaska, trade with the Alaska Natives, and later establish Sitka, AK, as the territory's capital. By the late 1850s, the Russian colony was no longer profitable, it was difficult to defend, and the monarchy was in need of cash following Russia's defeat in the Crimean War (1853–1856). Russia first offered to sell the territoy to the United States in 1859, but the start of the American Civil War in 1861 delayed negotiations. In March 1867, Russian Minister to the United States Edouard de Stoeckl and Secrectary of State William H. Seward renewed negotiations. On March 30, 1867, they drafted a treaty for the sale of Alaska to the United States for $7.2 million (approximately $150 million today), equivalent to 2 cents (42 cents in 2023) per acre. The U.S. Senate approved the treaty on April 9; President Andrew Johnson signed the Alaska Purchase Treaty on October 18; and Alaska was formally transferred to the United States on October 18, 1867. On August 1, 1868, the U.S. Treasury wrote Stoeckl a check for $7.2 million to complete the purchase of Alaska.
An enumerator (left) travels by dogsled to conduct the 1940 Census in Alaska. His guide (center) waits to mush the dogs to the next household.
Enumerators still use dogsleds as well as skis, snow mobiles, snowshoes, and airplanes to conduct the census in remote areas of Alaska.
Photo courtesy of the U.S. Census Bureau
Aside from sending troops to Alaska, the United States did little with the territory for decades. Elements of the U.S. Army's 9th Infantry participated in the October 18, 1867, transfer ceremony in Sitka, and later built military installations, including those in Wrangell and Kodiak Island. Under military supervision, the harvest of seals proved profitable in Alaska, but many merchants arriving in Sitka—the only settlement with American residents—soon learned that exploiting the region's other natural resources proved too costly. As a result, many Americans considered "Seward's Folly" a wasteful expenditure for frozen, barren territory with little value.
Interest in Alaska renewed when American George Carmack and First Nation prospectors Keish ("Skookum Jim Mason") and Kaa Goox ("Tagish Charlie") discovered a substantial gold deposit in the Klondike region of Yukon, Canada. The ensuing Klondike Gold Rush from 1896 to 1899—the biggest since the California Gold Rush 50 years earlier—saw 100,000 prospectors begin the arduous trek to the remote Klondike region from ports in Skagway and Dyea, AK. A second rush following a gold strike near Nome, AK in 1899 saw thousands more flood into Alaska. In addition to miners, these gold strikes brought thousands of people to the territory hoping to make their fortune by supporting the prospectors as ldry goods merchants, stablekeepers, barkeepers, grocers, tailors, etc. Between 1890 and 1900, Alaska saw its population nearly double from 32,052 to 63,592. The population was stagnant until the United States recognized the territory's strategic value following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Military personnel and civillians poured into the state as government spending improved roads, military bases and airfields, ports, and utilities, helping Alaska's population grew from 72,524 in 1940 to 128,643 in 1950.
Alaska's population continued to grow with each census after becoming a state on January 3, 1959. Thanks in part to its proximity to the Soviet Union during the Cold War, growth of its oil and mining industry, and wealth of other natural resources, the state's population rose from 226,167 in 1960 to 302,853 in 1970; 401,851 in 1980; and 550,043 in 1990. Since the United States began conducting censuses in Alaska in 1870, enumerators counted villages in Alaska's remote areas months earlier than in the rest of the nation to take advantage of the frozen ground, rivers, and lakes that made transportation easier. Most recently, U.S. Census Bureau director Steven Dillingham braved frigid temperatures to formally begin the 2020 Census in Alaska by enumerating residents in Toksook Bay on January 21, 2020. When census takers were done, Toksook Bay had a population of 658. Residents of Alaska's larger cities, including Anchorage, Fairbanks, Wasilla, Sitka, and Ketchikan responded to the census by mail or online using the questionnaires mailed nationwide in March 2020. When the most recent census concluded Alaska's population grew from 710,231 in 2010 to 733,391 in 2020.
You can learn more about Alaska and its people using census data and records. For example:
U.S. Census Bureau director Robert Groves arrives at the remote Inupiat Eskimo village of Noorvik, AK, by dogsled to formally begin the 2010 Census.
The census begins earlier in Alaska when the frozen ground, rivers, and lakes make it easier to reach remote areas.
Photo courtesy of the U.S. Census Bureau
On January 10, 1921, a fire in the basement of the Department of Commerce building in Washington, DC, destroyed the majority of the 1890 Census schedules.
The loss of the original 1890 schedules left an enormous gap in many families' genealogical record. Alternative records may provide some information, but the loss of the 1890 Census schedules is an insurmountable obstacle for many genealogists tracing families between the 1880 and 1900 censuses.
In 1870, Major General Henry W. Halleck directed the first American census in Alaska, but the data are unreliable due duplication and errors.
In 1880, Ivan Petrof supervised Alaska's enumeration beginning in the Aleutian Island town of Attu. The 2-year operation counted 33,426 inhabitants in Alaska, including 430 Whites, 1,756 Creoles, 17,617 Innuit, 2,145 Aleut, 3,927 Tinneh, 6,793 Thlinket, and 788 Hyda. The territory's Kuskokvim Division was most populous with 8,911 inhabitants, followed by the Southeastern Division with 7,748. The U.S. Census Bureau published Petrof's complete report in 1884.
The 1890 Census reported that there were 32,052 people in Alaska, including 23,531 "Indians."
Frigid temperatures greeted 1910 Census enumerators as they counted Alaska's 64,356 inhabitants, including 25,331 "Indians."
Because of Alaska's size and number of remote villages, 1940 census takers began canvassing the territory in October 1939. Over several months, they counted 11,283 "Indians" among the territory's 72,524 inhabitants.
One year after Alaska's statehood, the 1960 Census counted 34,444 "Indians" among Alaska's 226,167 total population.
In 1970, Alaskans could specify if they were American Indian, Aleut, or Eskimo. Americans nationwide could identify as American Indian, Eskimo, or Aleut in 1980. The 2000 Census was first to use the term "Alaska Native."
In 2020, 133,311 Americans identified as Alaska Native alone, including 102,765 people in Alaska.
Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress
Since the 19th century, the U.S. Census Bureau has tried to hire census takers with the local knowledge and language skills most prevalent in the areas to be enumerated, including Alaska Natives like Kathryn Dyakanoff Seller.
Seller was born in Unalaska, AK, in 1884. She attended the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, and graduated from the Carlisle, PA, school in 1906. After receiving a teaching degree from the West Chester Normal School in 1909, she returned to her home state to teach in Sitka. She married Harry Seller in 1909 and moved with him to Atka, AK, where they opened the first government-funded school in the Aleutian Islands and helped establish the area's first cooperative store, radio station, and library.
In 1920, the Sellers were living on Kodiak Island, when Harry worked as a census enumerator and Kathryn assisted as his Aleutian translator.
After her husband's death, Kathryn's government and census expertise made her an ideal candidate to work on the 1940 Census. For 6 weeks in November and December 1939, Seller enumerated 82 people in remote Alaska.
After retiring in 1948, Seller continued to educate and share her native culture with others. In 2017, she was posthumously inducted into the Alaska Women's Hall of Fame Link to a non-federal Web site for her dedication to Alaska Native education and culture.
Learn more about Seller and other American Indian and Alaska Native Census Bureau employees at our Notable Alumni webpage.