History of Alaska

The flag of Alaska

The history of Alaska as part of the United States began in 1867, but the settlement of the area dates back to the Old Stone Age (12,000 BC) back. The earliest inhabitants were Asian groups who immigrated to what is now western Alaska via Beringia . Many, if not most, of the pre-Columbian peoples of the Americas came across these land bridges. Before the arrival of Russian settlers , Eskimos and a host of other indigenous peoples lived here . (→ Native of Alaska )

Most of Alaska's documented history began with European settlement. The Danish navigator Vitus Bering , who served in the Russian Navy on board St. Peter , is often credited with the western discovery of America. The first sighting of Alaska may have been made by Semyon Ivanovich Deschnjow in 1648. Alexei Ilyich Tschirikow (Алексей Ильич Чириков), the commander of St. Paul , landed in what is now Sitka on July 15, 1741 . From 1783 on began Grigori Ivanovich Schelikow launched Russian-American Company , the otters to hunt and in the colonization to help the coastal areas of Alaska, but the colony was never profitable mainly due to high shipping costs ( see Russian America ).

Map of Alaska

The US Secretary of State William H. Seward arranged the purchase of Alaska on April 9, 1867 for 7.2 million US dollars (around 90 million US dollars based on today's value). Alaska and the neighboring Yukon Territory in Canada were the scene of a gold rush in the 19th century and remained a significant mining area even after the gold reserves were extinguished . On July 7, 1958, US President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Alaska Statehood Act , paving the way for Alaska's admission to the United States as the 49th state on January 3, 1959.

The Good Friday quake on March 27, 1964 with a magnitude of 9.2 killed 131 people and destroyed some cities. The income from the oil helped the population rebuild the state's infrastructure after deposits were found in 1968 and the Trans-Alaska Pipeline completed in 1977 . In 1989 the Exxon Valdez ran into a reef in Prince William Sound , whereupon 42,000 tons of crude oil leaked and contaminated the coast over a length of 1,600 km. Today, more than half of Alaska is owned by the federal government . There are controversial debates about the future of the huge, barely developed wilderness areas (the so-called frontier ). B. in the current political dispute over possible oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge .

prehistory

An Inupiat woman, ca.1907

Between 16,000 and 10,000 BC Paleolithic families moved to north-west North America via Beringia in western Alaska . The passage was covered in a huge sheet of ice until a temporary retreat in the last Ice Age opened a corridor in northwest Canada through which groups could spread across the rest of the continent. One of the oldest cultures that can be archaeologically understood is the Nenana complex . Alaska was populated by the Eskimos and numerous indigenous groups. Today the early inhabitants of Alaska are divided into several main groups: the Indians of the southeast coast (the Tlingit , Haida and Tsimshian ), the Athapasques , the Aleutians and the Inupiat and Yupik .

The Tlingit, Haida and Athapasques held potlatches , with a powerful person giving away all their possessions, giving them to eat or having them destroyed. Family stories were told at these festivals, and ceremonial titles and gifts were given to the ancestors. Aleutian society was divided into three categories: honorable people (highly respected whalers and the elderly), ordinary people, and slaves. When a dignitary died , his corpse was mummified and slaves were occasionally killed in honor of the deceased. These peoples hunted with snares, clubs, spears and bows and arrows.

See also: Native Alaska

18th century

Russian Alaska

See also the main article Russian America

As this photo from the Bering Strait shows, the west coast of Alaska is only around 85 kilometers from the Russian east coast

Russian America with partly Russian, partly English place names on a map from 1860

The first written documents show that the first Europeans in Alaska came from Russia . In 1648 the Russian traders Semyon Ivanovich Deschnjow and Fedor Alekseev were the first to cross the Bering Strait, but without sighting the American continent. In 1741, the expedition of the Danish navigator Vitus Bering in the service of the Russian Navy, together with the Russian Alexei Ilyich Tschirikow, made the first secure landing on the American continent. On board the St. Peter and St. Paul , they set sail from the Siberian port of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky . On July 15, 1741, Tschirikow was the first to land near what is now Sitka . After surviving a shipwreck, Bering's crew returned to Russia with very fine sea ​​otter pelts. Russian-American society soon began hunting the otters and helping colonize the coastal areas of Alaska, but the colony was never profitable due to the high cost of shipping. Georg Wilhelm Steller , the ship's naturalist, hiked across the island and examined the flora and fauna.

Russia set up posts for hunting and trading. The Empress Catherine II. Proclaimed the good will towards the Aleutian Islands and ordered their subordinates to treat them fairly, but in the hunt for furs welfare was Native disregarded. In 1784 Grigory Ivanovich Schelikow (Григорий Иванович Шелихов), who later founded the Russian-American Society for the Colonization of Early Alaska, reached Kodiak Island with two ships, the Three Saints and Saint Simon . The residents fought against the newcomers, and the Russians and Shelikov responded by killing hundreds of them and taking them hostage to force others to obey. After securing his authority on Kodiak Island, Shelikov established the first permanent Russian settlement in Alaska on Three Saints Bay . He founded a school to teach the local people the spoken and written Russian language and introduced the Orthodox religion.

In 1790, after his return to Russia, Schelikov signed Alexander Andreevich Baranov (Александр Андреевич Баранов) as manager of his fur company in Alaska. When he saw how non-Russian Europeans traded with the indigenous people in southeast Alaska, Baranov established Mikhailovsk in 1795, 10 km north of what is now Sitka . By 1804, Baranov, now head of the Russian-American company, consolidated the claim to the fur trade on the American continent after his victory over the Tlingit clan in the Battle of Sitka . However, with intensive hunting and reliance on American supply ships, profits began to decline. Russian America was sold to the United States and all of the Russian-American company's assets were liquidated .

Spanish expeditions

Captain Juan Francisco Bodega y Quadra, ca.1785

For fear of Russian expansion, the Spanish King Charles III sent. between 1774 and 1791 several expeditions from Mexico to explore the Pacific Northwest . The second expedition under Lieutenant Bruno de Hezeta with 90 men on board the Santiago set sail on March 16, 1775 in San Blas (Mexico) with orders to claim the Pacific Northwest for Spain. Hezeta was accompanied by the supply ship Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe (commonly known as Señora ), originally under the command of Juan de Ayala . The 11 m long schooner with a crew of 16 was tasked with exploring and mapping the coast and was able to moor in places that the larger Santiago could not reach on its previous voyage. This allowed the expedition to officially claim the lands north of Mexico they visited.

The two ships sailed together in a northerly direction to Point Grenville ( Washington ), which Hezeta called Punta de los Martires ("Place of the Martyrs ") after an attack by the local Quinault Indians . On the evening of July 29, 1775, the ships parted according to plan. The Santiago continued to what is now the border between Washington and Canada . The Señora (now with Second Officer Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra at the wheel) moved along the coast until she reached the Sitka Strait on August 15 at the 59th parallel north. There the Spaniards carried out several "acts of rule" by naming and claiming Puerto de Bucareli (Bucareli Sound), Puerto de los Remedios and Mount San Jacinto. The latter three years later by British explorer James Cook in Mount Edgecumbe renamed. On their voyage, the crews of both ships had to endure many difficulties, including lack of food and scurvy . On September 8th, the ships met again and returned to San Blas.

Alessandro Malaspina led another expedition. In 1791 the Spanish king commissioned him to look for the Northwest Passage. He explored the coast from Alaska to Prince William Sound . In Yakutat Bay , the expedition encountered the Tlingit . Spanish scholars took an interest in the people and gathered information on social customs, language, economics, war methods and burial rituals. The expedition artists, Tomas de Suria and José Cardero, drew portraits of tribesmen and everyday scenes from the life of the Tlingit. A glacier between Yakutat Bay and Icy Bay was named after Malaspina.

In the end, the rivalry in the North Pacific proved expensive for the Spaniards, who withdrew from the competition in 1819 with the Adams-Onís Treaty and gave up their claims to the region. Today only a few place names remain of the Spanish heritage, including the Malaspina glacier and the city of Valdez .

British presence

British settlement in Alaska was limited to a few scattered trading posts, with most of the settlers arriving by sea. In the course of his third and final expedition in 1778, Captain James Cook sailed aboard the Resolution along the west coast of North America and mapped the coast from California to the Bering Strait . During his trip he discovered Cook Inlet, which his colleague George Vancouver named in his honor in 1794 . The Bering Strait proved impassable, although the Resolution and its escort ship, the HMS Discovery, tried it several times. The ships returned to Hawaii in 1779 .

During Cook's visit to find the Northwest Passage, the Russians tried to impress him with the extent of their control over the region, but Cook thought they were an insignificant group of seedy hunters and traders. Although he died in Hawaii after his visit to Alaska, his crew continued to Guangzhou , China , where they sold the sea otter pelts, which they had bought for high prices in Alaska. Cook's expedition spurred the British on to intensify their voyages along the northwest coast in the wake of the Spanish. Three Hudson's Bay Company sponsored posts were in Fort Yukon and Wrangell (the only city in Alaska under British, Russian, and American rule) in the early 19th century .

19th century

Russian-American agreement

The check the US used to buy Alaska for $ 7.2 million

Financial troubles in Russia, the desire not to let Alaska fall into the hands of the British, and the low profits from trading with settlers in Alaska all contributed to the Russian move to sell the properties in North America. The US Secretary of State William H. Seward initiated the purchase of Alaska on April 9, 1867 for 7.2 million dollars (around 90 million dollars at today's value). Alaska and the neighboring Yukon Territory in Canada were the scene of a gold rush in the 19th century and remained a significant mining area even after the gold reserves were extinguished . On July 7, 1958, US President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Alaska Statehood Act , paving the way for Alaska's admission to the United States as the 49th state on January 3, 1959.

The Alaska Department

Miners and prospectors climb the Chilkoot Trail during the Klondike Gold Rush

After the USA bought Alaska from Russia, they hoisted their flag there on October 18, 1867; today we celebrate Alaska Day on this day . Due to the change of ownership, the date line shifted de facto to the west and Alaska switched its time calculation from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar . For the residents, Friday, October 6th, was followed by October 18th, 1867, also a Friday. The unpopular purchase was known as "Seward's folly" or "Seward's refrigerator", even if it later proved to be valuable through the discovery of gold.

During the Department of Alaska era from 1867 to 1884, Alaska was under the jurisdiction of the US Army (until 1877), the US Treasury Department (1877–1879) and the US Navy (1879–1884). The area later became the Alaska Territory and eventually Alaska. In the aftermath of the purchase, most of Alaska was initially unexplored. In 1865 the Western Union laid a telegraph line through Alaska to the Bering Strait, where it was connected to an Asian line. She also conducted the first scientific studies of the area and produced the first map of the entire Yukon River . The Alaska Commercial Company and the military also contributed to the growing exploration of Alaska during the last decades of the 19th century by establishing trading posts on the many inland rivers.

The District of Alaska

Alaska prospectors panning for gold (1916)

In 1884 the region was organized and the name changed to " District of Alaska ". At the time, Washington, DC lawmakers were busy rebuilding post- Civil War rebuilding and barely had time to worry about Alaska. In 1896, the discovery of gold in the Yukon Territory of neighboring Canada attracted thousands of miners to Alaska and although it was not clear whether gold could be found here , the country benefited because it was on the easiest transport route.

In 1899, the first gold in Alaska was found in Nome , after which several cities such as Fairbanks and Ruby emerged. 1902 began with the construction of the Alaska Railroad , which from 1914 connected Seward with Fairbanks. However, there is still no railroad that connects Alaska with the 48 southern states. A new overland route shortened the transport times to the neighboring countries by several days. Copper mining, fishing and canning (10 factories in some major cities) became popular industries in the early 20th century.

20th century

Alaska Territory

Fishing boat catching cod and halibut in the 20th century

Commercial fishing was established in the Aleutian Islands at the beginning of the 20th century . Cod and herrings were salted, and salmon were canned. Another traditional occupation, whaling , continued regardless of overhunting. Bowhead whales have been brought to the brink of extinction to preserve the oil in their tissues (however, in recent years, a decline in commercial fishing has caused the population to recover enough that indigenous peoples can catch many specimens each year without a endanger the existence). The Aleutians soon suffered severe problems with the destruction of the fur seals and sea ​​otters that they needed to survive. Not only do they use the meat for food, but also the hide to cover their boats, without which they could not hunt. The Americans also advanced into interior and arctic Alaska, killing the fur animals, fish, and other game on which the indigenous population depended.

When Congress passed the Second Organic Act in 1912, Alaska was reorganized and renamed the Territory of Alaska . In 1916 58,000 people lived there. James Wickersham, a member of Congress, made the first application for statehood, but it failed due to a lack of interest. A visit from US President Warren G. Harding did nothing to change that. Alaska was now divided into four districts. In the most populous with Juneau as the capital, there were considerations to found a state of its own without the other three districts. Government control was the most important concern as the territory had 52 federal offices.

In 1920 the "Jones Act" required that ships sailing under the US flag be built in the USA, owned by US Americans and documented according to US law. All goods imported or exported to or from Alaska had to be transported by American freight forwarders and brought to Seattle , which made Alaska dependent on Washington. The Supreme Court ruled that the constitutional clause that one state should not control another's trade does not apply because Alaska was just a territory. Seattle shipping took advantage of this situation to raise prices.

The global economic crisis led to a drop in the price of fish and copper, which are so important for the Alaskan economy. Wages fell and the labor force fell by more than half. In 1935 Franklin D. Roosevelt transferred Americans from rural areas to the Alaskan Matanuska-Susitna Valley in order to offer them a new chance for agricultural self-sufficiency. The settlers came, for the most part, from northern states such as Michigan , Wisconsin, and Minnesota , believing that only those raised in a climate similar to that of Alaska could survive there. The United Congo Improvement Association asked the president to resettle 400 African American farmers in Alaska because they had full political rights there, but racial prejudice and the belief that only Northerners were suitable made the plan fail.

The exploration and settlement of Alaska would not have been possible without the development of aviation , because it ensured the influx of settlers into the interior of the state and enabled the rapid transport of people and goods. However, due to the adverse weather conditions and the high proportion of pilots in the population, there are over 1700 aircraft wrecks in this area. Numerous wrecks also date from the state's military history during World War II and the Cold War .

Second World War

Burning buildings after the first enemy attack on Dutch Harbor on June 3, 1942

During World War II, the three outer Aleutian islands - Attu , Agattu, and Kiska - were the only occupied part of the United States. The Japanese started the campaign mainly to distract attention from battles in other parts of the world, but it was also intended to use the islands as a base for an attack on the main part of the US. The battle became a matter of national pride as it faced the first foreign military campaign on US soil since the War of 1812 .

On June 3, 1942, the Japanese launched an air raid on the US base Dutch Harbor in Unalaska . The US forces were able to repel the planes and save the base, which also survived a second attack with minor damage. On June 7th, the Japanese landed on the islands of Kiska and Attu, where they overpowered the residents. The latter were brought to Japan and interned there for the remainder of the war. The residents of the Pribilof Islands were evacuated from the US in 1942 to southeast Alaska, where the 881 Alaska Natives had to stay until the end of the war. They received $ 12 per capita in compensation.

In the fall of 1942, the US Navy set up a base on Adak and on May 11, 1943, American troops landed on Attu to retake the islands. The battle for the Aleutians lasted more than two weeks. The Japanese, who had no hope of rescue because the fleet of their transport submarines had been pushed back by the US destroyers, fought to the last man. The battle finally ended on May 29, when the Americans fought off a banzai attack. Some Japanese hid on the small island for up to three months after their defeat, killing themselves instead of surrendering to the Eskimos when they were discovered. There were 3829 accidents on the American side: 549 fatalities, 1148 injured, 1200 with frostbite, 614 died from illness and 318 from other reasons such as Japanese booby traps or self-fire .

The US then turned to the other occupied island of Kiska. Bombs fell on the tiny island from June to August. The Japanese fled with transport ships in the thick Aleut fog. After the war, the federal government resettled the indigenous people of Attu, who had survived Japanese captivity, to Atka because their home villages were too far away to defend.

One result of the Second World War is the completion of the Alaska-Canada Military Highway . The Great Falls to Fairbanks Road was the first stable land link between Alaska and the rest of America. The establishment of military bases also contributed to population growth in some Alaskan cities. The population of Anchorage nearly doubled from 4,200 in 1940 to 8,000 five years later.

Statehood

At the beginning of the 20th century, there was a movement in Alaska demanding recognition of Alaska as a state, but the contiguous 48 states , given their dispersed and isolated populations and unstable economies, doubted whether Alaska would be a valuable addition to the United States . World War II and the Japanese invasion emphasized Alaska's strategic importance, and the issue of statehood was now being discussed more seriously, but the discovery of oil on the Swanson River in the Kenai Peninsula erased the image of a weak, dependent region. US President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Alaska Statehood Act on July 7, 1958 , which opened the way for Alaska's admission to the Union on January 3, 1959. Juneau , the capital of the Territory, remained the capital of the new state, and William Egan was sworn in as the first governor .

In contrast to the other states, Alaska has no counties , but is divided into 29 census areas and boroughs . Boroughs ("districts") have an organized administration, while Census Areas (" Census Areas ") are just artificial divisions that are defined by the United States Census Bureau for statistical purposes. All those areas in the state that do not belong to an organized borough with its own administration, together form what the government calls the Unorganized Borough . In the unorganized borough , the administrative tasks at the borough level are taken over directly by the state.

The "Good Friday Quake"

The sea level changed significantly after the "Good Friday earthquake"

On March 27, 1964, the " Good Friday Quake " struck south and central Alaska and shook the earth for four minutes at a magnitude of 9.2. The earthquake was one of the strongest of all time, killing 131 people. Most of them died from the tsunamis that devastated the villages of Valdez and Chenega . Cities and ports have been destroyed and land has been moved across the Prince William Sound region. Land uplift created insurmountable barriers for salmon that could no longer reach their spawning grounds. The ports in Valdez and Cordova were irreparably damaged and fires destroyed what had been left by the mudslides. In Valdez, an Alaska Steamship Company ship was lifted from the dock into the sea by a huge wave, but most of the workers survived. In Turnagain Arm, outside Cook Inlet, the water entering destroyed trees and sank huts in the mud. On Kodiak, a tidal wave wiped out the villages of Afognak, Old Harbor, and Kaguyak and damaged other communities while Seward lost its port.

Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act

Regional parishes under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act

Despite the magnitude of the disaster, Alaska rebuilt many communities. Since the mid-1960s, Alaska's indigenous peoples have been involved in state and local government. More than 200 years after the arrival of the first Europeans, they united from all ethnic groups to lay claim to land that had been torn from them. The government was slow to react until the Atlantic-Richfield Company (ARCO) discovered oil in Prudhoe Bay on the Arctic coast in 1968, making headlines about land ownership. To ease the hassle of drilling in such a remote location and moving the oil to the other 48 states, the best solution seemed to be a pipeline across Alaska to the Port of Valdez, built on the ruins of the former city. In Valdez, the oil was to be loaded onto tankers and transported by sea to the other states. The plan was approved, but permission to build a pipeline running through the disputed areas could not be granted until the claims of the indigenous population were settled.

The pressure of the financially strong oil industry finally led to the signing of the " Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act " in 1971 . Indigenous officials waived their original claims and were given access to 44 million acres of land and $ 963 million . The land and money were divided among regional, city, and local associations, but the recipients handled the finances very differently. The deal compensated the indigenous people for invading their land and gave all Alaskans the opportunity to benefit from oil, the state's largest natural resource. In 2002, 225 Indian tribes were recognized in Alaska.

The Trans-Alaska Pipeline

Between the Prudhoe Bay oil field in the North Slope on the Beaufort Sea and Valdez on the Gulf of Alaska lie three mountain ranges, active faults , regions with unstable, swampy permafrost and migration routes for caribou and elk . In order to overcome these obstacles, half of the approximately 1,300 km long pipeline is elevated so that it does not thaw the permafrost and does not destroy any natural terrain. To protect against earthquakes, the pipeline zigzags so that it moves with the earth instead of breaking. The first oil arrived in Valdez on July 28, 1977. The total cost of the pipeline and all related projects such as the tanker terminal in Valdez, 12 pumping stations and the Yukon River Bridge was $ 8 billion.

A caribou next to the pipeline in the north of the Brooks Range

With the proceeds from the extracted oil, the per capita income in the state increased, from which almost every community benefited. The political leadership was certain that this boom would not end in economic bankruptcy after the resources had dried up, like the fur trade or gold mining before. In 1976 the government changed the state constitution and introduced the Alaska Permanent Fund . The fund invests a portion of government revenues from natural resources, including those of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, "for the benefit of all generations of Alaskans." 25% of all raw material lease income goes to the fund, which pays all participating residents annual dividends , provides money against inflation and provides the legislature with investment funds. The fund is the largest cash reservoir in the United States and a major government lender. Since 1993, the fund has made more money than the Prudhoe Bay oil fields , whose production is dwindling and could dry up by the beginning of the 21st century while the fund continues to serve the state. In March 2005 the value was over $ 30 billion.

→ See main article: Trans-Alaska Pipeline

present

Up until 1983, Alaska covered four different time zones: Pacific Standard Time ( UTC -8 hours) in the extreme southeast, a small area with Yukon Standard Time (UTC -9 hours) around Juneau, Hawaii Standard Time (UTC -10 hours) around Anchorage and Fairbanks, and Bering Standard Time (UTC -11 hours) in Nome and most of the Aleutian islands. In 1983, the number of time zones was reduced to two, with the entire mainland and the Inner Aleutian Islands being set to UTC -9 hours (renamed Alaska Standard Time because the Yukon area had adopted a single time zone around 1975 that was identical to the Pacific Standard Time was) and the other Aleutians were assigned to the time zone UTC -10 hours (now Hawaii-Aleutian Standard Time).

In the second half of the 20th century, Alaska discovered tourism as an important source of income. Tourism became popular after World War II when soldiers from the area came home and praised the area's natural splendor. The Alcan Highway built during the war and the Alaska Marine Highway System completed in 1963 made the state more accessible than before. Tourism is big business in Alaska today, with 1.4 million people visiting Denali National Park, Katmai National Park and Preserve, Glacier Bay, and the Kenai Peninsula, among others, each year. Although wildlife viewing is popular, few visitors go into the wild.

Due to the economic importance of tourism, environmental policy has become more important. The Alaskans try to match the needs of the country with those of the people. Much of the country is already well protected. The ANILCA (Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act) of 1980 expanded the system of National Wildlife Refuges by 53.7 million acres , added portions of 25 rivers to the national network of protected rivers ( National Wild and Scenic Rivers ) , declared an additional 3.3 million acres of forest national forests and designated 43.6 million acres of land as national park. By law, Alaska now covers 2/3 of the total area of ​​all American national parks.

Exxon Valdez oil spill

Oil spills in the first few days after the accident

On March 24, 1989, the tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground in Prince William Sound, losing 11 million gallons of crude oil that spilled over 1,800 km of coastline. At least 300,000 seabirds, 2,000 otters and other marine animals died from the oil spill, according to the US Fish and Wildlife Service . Exxon paid $ 2 billion to clean it in the first year alone . Around 12,000 workers were employed on the coast in the summer of 1989. Their tasks included the removal of the polluted beaches, vacuuming up the crude oil, cleaning the sand with hot water, cleaning the rocks by hand, collecting oily algae and spraying fertilizer to encourage the growth of oil-eating microbes .

The oil spill attracted international attention and the influx of cleaners filled all hotels and campsites in the Valdez area, strengthening the economy but weakening tourism. Exxon continued cleaning operations in cooperation with the state and federal agencies through the early 1990s. In some areas, such as Smith Island, winter storms helped more than any human effort. Government studies show that the oil and the purification process caused long-term damage to the ecology of the sound, creating reproductive problems for birds and animals that still cannot be fully explained. Prince William Sound appears to have recovered, but scientists disagree on the extent. In a civil case, Exxon agreed to pay $ 900 million in ten annual installments plus an additional $ 100 million for newly discovered damage.

The oil, chemical and nuclear workers' union, which represents around 40,000 workers nationwide, announced resistance to drilling at the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) pending Congress to adopt a comprehensive national energy policy. In view of the oil spill, Alaskan Governor Steve Cowper ordered two tugs to accompany each tanker from Valdez through Prince William Sound to the Hinchinbrook Entrance. The majority of tankers in Valdez are still single-walled, but Congress has decided that by 2015 all tankers must be double-walled.

Arctic Refuge drilling controversy

In the 1990s, the authorized National Energy Bill by US President George HW Bush drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), a large nature reserve in northern Alaska, but a filibuster of the Democrats in the Senate prevented the implementation. In 1995 the Republican Party tried again and included the ANWR in the state budget. Bill Clinton vetoed the budget and announced that he would veto any motion to allow drilling in the ANWR. Proponents of the drilling indicated that it would hold 16 billion barrels of oil, the highest number cited in the 1998 United States Geological Survey (USGS) report and representing only a 5% probability of technical recoverable oil in the entire investigated area. Opponents spoke of only 3 billion barrels of oil, which was the rounded down minimum value from the report, which has a 95% probability of only being on federally owned land and only a small portion of the ANWR near the Canning River .

According to the central message of the USGS report, there is more oil in ANWR than initially assumed and this oil is mainly concentrated in the western part of "Section 1002". In 1998, the average west coast price of Alaskan crude oil was $ 12.54 a barrel, by September 2000 the price had risen to $ 37.22. This resulted in Bill Clinton ordering oil from the Strategic Oil Reserve to be released. Al Gore , the then US Vice President, drew a solid line on the Canning River and former oil industrialists George W. Bush and Dick Cheney (2001 to 2009 President and Vice President of the USA, respectively) were in their support for drilling in Section 1002 “Adamant. In December 2000, a Coast Guard report showed repeated security breaches at an Alyeska Pipeline Service Company terminal in Valdez , causing prices to rise again. In April 2002, the Senate rejected a House motion . In March 2005, however, the new application was accepted. On March 16, the Senate granted a fund for drilling as part of the budget for the 2006 tax year. On November 3, 2005, the Senate voted to allow drilling in Alaska, but on November 10, the House of Representatives prevented Republicans from getting out of the country for fear Losing political center, a provision in the Deficit Reduction Act that would have allowed drilling in the ANWR. In the last few days of his term in office, George W. Bush had a regulation removed from the law for the protection of threatened species, according to which companies have to prove that no endangered animal species are endangered when interfering with sensitive ecosystems. The subsequent administration under Barack Obama put this passage back into law in April 2009 and thus reversed the restrictions on nature conservation in Alaska.

death penalty

Today Alaska is one of the few states that never had a death penalty , despite the fact that eight men were executed by law enforcement agencies between 1900 and 1957 (when Alaska was not a state) . In 1957, two years before Alaska's statehood, the death penalty was abolished by the then territory legislature.

literature

• Ben A. Potter: Radiocarbon Chronology of Central Alaska. Technological Continuity and Economic Change , in: Radiocarbon 50.2 (2008) 181-204.
• CL Andrews, The Story of Alaska , The Caxton Printers Ltd., Caldwell, 1994.
• Walter R. Borneman Alaska: A Narrative History , Harper-Collins, New York, 2003, ISBN 0-06-050306-8
• Svetlana G. Fedorova, (Translator: Richard A. Pierce and Alton S. Donnelly), The Russian Population in Alaska and California: Late 18th Century - 1867 , Limestone Press, Kingston (Ontario), 1973, ISBN 0-919642-53- 5
• Stephen Haycox, Alaska: An American Colony , University of Washington Press, Seattle, 2002, ISBN 0-295-98249-7
• Peter Littke, From the Tsar's Eagle to the Stars and Stripes. The history of Russian Alaska , Essen: Magnus Verlag 2003, ISBN 3-88400-019-5 . (Contains a German translation of the sales contracts of Fort Ross 1841 and Alaska 1867)
• Claus-M. Naske and Herman E. Slotnick, Alaska: A History of the 49th State , University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 2003, ISBN 0-8061-2099-1
• David J. Nordlander, For God & Tsar: A Brief History of Russian America 1741-1867 , Alaska Natural History Association, Anchorage, 1993, ISBN 0-930931-15-7
• David Wharton, They Don't Speak Russian in Sitka: A New Look at the History of Southern Alaska , Markgraf Publications Group, Menlo Park, 1991, ISBN 0-944109-08-X
• Alaskan Crash Site Locater , Check-Six, 2003, ISBN 0-9765562-0-0

See also

• National Register of Historic Places in Alaska

Web links

Commons : History of Alaska  - Collection of Images, Videos, and Audio Files

• Prehistory of Alaska from the National Park Service
• Alaska's Digital Archives
• A Brief History of Alaska Statehood (1867-1959)
• Alaska History and Cultural Studies

swell

1. ^ Early Prehistory of Alaska ( Memento of February 18, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
2. ^ Alaska State History
3. ↑ Russia's Great Voyages ( Memento of the original from September 24, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
4. ^ Alaska History Timeline
5. ^ The 49th State
6. ↑ Aleutian Islands Campaign 1942–1943 ( Memento of the original from March 29, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
7. ↑ WWII internment of Aleuts recounted in documentary, in: USA today, December 4, 2005 and Myth Blaster - Revealing the Truth About the Internment of Aleutian Alaskans During World War II , in: Lighthouse Patriot Journal, May 26, 2008 ( memento dated 2 February 2010 in the Internet Archive )
8. ↑ Aleutian Islands War - June 3, 1942 - August 24, 1943
9. ↑ The Great Alaska Earthquake of 1964 ( Memento of the original from April 4, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
10. ^ San Francisco Chronicle
11. ^ Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act
12. ↑ According to the Bureau of Indian Affairs .
13. ↑ The Trans-Alaska Pipeline ( Memento of the original from April 19, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
14. ↑ The Alaska State Library FAQ - Time Zones ( Memento of the original from May 17, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
15. ^ Exxon Valdez, Oil Program, US EPA
16. ↑ Bush's drilling laws repealed: Nature conservation has priority again , n-tv.de, April 29, 2009