When did the US buy Alaska?

Russia, struggling financially after the Crimean War and worried it could not defend the distant territory from Britain, agreed to sell. US Secretary of State William Seward negotiated the treaty, and the price worked out to about two cents per acre. Critics mocked the deal as 'Seward's Folly' and Alaska as 'Seward's Icebox'. Attitudes changed after gold was discovered in the Klondike region and Alaska in the 1890s, and later huge oil reserves were found. Alaska became the 49th US state on 3 January 1959.