You know, if you think about the history of the
world in terms of, like, a high school classroom,
Alaska's kind of like the quiet, ignored kid
sitting way in the back. The one nobody really
pays attention to. But then, over summer break,
that quiet kid suddenly inherits a billion dollars
and, like, a military arsenal. Oh, wow. And abruptly,
every one in the room is forced to pay attention.
That is a very apt way to put it. Welcome to
this custom deep dive. Today we're exploring
the history of Alaska and we're basing our entire
journey today on a really comprehensive Wikipedia
article that covers, well, pretty much everything.
Yeah, from ancient Paleolithic foragers crossing
the ice all the way up to 21st century pandemics.
Exactly. And our mission for you today is to
unpack how this massive, super isolated region
transformed from a frozen kind of ignored frontier
into the ultimate geopolitical and economic prize.
It really is. And we want to discover what its
endless boom and bust cycles can actually teach
us about humanity's relationship with nature.
So, okay, let's unpack this. Let's do it. It's
just a remarkable transformation to witness.
And honestly, whether you, our listener, are
interested in economics or military strategy
or environmentalism, Alaska serves as the ultimate
extreme case study for all three. Yeah. Because
for a very, very long time, it wasn't a prize
to be won or a resource to be extracted. It was
just home. Right, and we really have to start
there. Because it's so easy to fall into the
trap of thinking Alaska was just, I don't know,
discovered one day by guys with flags. Exactly.
But it was a vital bridge and a completely thriving
ecosystem long, long before that. I mean, human
habitation goes back to around 14 ,000 BC. During
the Upper Paleolithic period. Yeah, you literally
had foraging groups walking across the Bering
Land Bridge from Asia into Western Alaska. And,
you know, while some of those early coastal migrants
just kept moving right into the interior of what
is now Canada and beyond, many of them recognized
the sheer abundance of the region and just stayed.
Over millennia, they didn't just survive. They
developed incredibly diverse complex cultures
perfectly adapted to this really vast, challenging
geography. It's amazing. It is. In the southeast,
you have the coastal Indians, so the Tlingit,
the Haida, and the Tsimshian. In the rugged interior,
you've got the Athabaskans out on the harsh island
chains, the Aleut. And further north, the two
distinct groups of Eskimos, the Inupiat and the
Yupik. Yeah, and reading the source, the very
name Alaska comes from the Aleut word alaksak.
Right? Yes. Which translates to the object toward
which the action of the sea is directed, or I
guess more simply, the mainland. The object toward
which the action of the sea is directed. That
is just incredibly poetic. It really is. And
for thousands of years, these indigenous groups
have the run of the place entirely self -sufficient.
But then, you know, the 18th century rolls around
and the sea brings something else entirely. Yeah,
it does. By the early 1700s, Russian expeditions
arrive, and they're followed pretty closely by
commercial fur traders. And those traders, they
were driven by a very specific, highly lucrative
commodity. The sea otter. The sea otter, specifically
the Carilion cumchactin and Aleutian sea otters.
Their fur was, it was thicker, glossier, and
blacker than anything found further south. Like
the ultimate luxury good. Exactly, it was the
ultimate luxury good in global markets at the
time. So in 1784, Grigori Shilikov arrived on
Kodiak Island, killed hundreds of indigenous
Konyak people, and just founded the first permanent
Russian settlement. Just brutal. Truly. Soon
after, Alexander Baranov took over management
of the fur enterprise, eventually establishing
New Archangel, which we now know as Sitka as
the colonial capital. See, I'm trying to wrap
my head around this idea of a Russian colony
in North America. Was this some massive, heavily
armed empire expanding across the continent?
Not exactly. Because it sounds like Russia basically
treated Alaska like a giant. icy ATM and when
it ran out of cash or in this case sea otters,
they just put a for sale sign on the lawn. That's
a great way to look at it. The empire was remarkably
thin on the ground. Despite Baranov's ambitions,
the Russians never fully colonized the region.
At the absolute height of Russian America, the
Russian population reached only 700 people. Wait.
Only 700. Yep, 700. That's the size of a small
high school. It really puts the scale into perspective,
doesn't it? But what's fascinating here is the
disproportionate, just devastating impact those
few hundred people had. Yeah. They relied entirely
on exploiting the native populations to do the
dangerous work of hunting. During the first two
generations of Russian contact, 80 % of the elute
population died. Wow. 80%. Primarily from old
world diseases that they just had no immunity
against. And on top of that, the traders enslaved
individuals split up families and forced relocations
just to maximize their fur harvests. That is
incredibly stark. It is. Though it's worth noting
the coastal Tlingits were never fully conquered.
They actually waged active war against the Russians
well into the 1850s. And the Russians left a
huge control footprint too, right? In the 1780s,
Shelikov brought over resident missionaries from
the Russian Orthodox Church. He did, and they
translated rituals and texts into a lute very
early on. If you travel through Alaska today,
the characteristic onion domes of the Orthodox
Churches remain one of the most visible architectural
traces of this whole colonial period. But it
wasn't just the Russians poking around, though.
The Spanish and the British were mapping the
coastline at exactly the same time. Right, Captain
James Cook. Yeah, he sailed through in 1778,
basically trying to find a way through the Bering
Strait. And Spain actually claimed the region
based on a papal bull from 1493. Which is wild
to think about. Right. They sailed all the way
up to 61 degrees north latitude, claiming Sitka
Sound. the european powers were essentially just
drawing lines on a map over territory they barely
understood yeah i mean the nitka crisis of 1789
almost started a literal war between britain
and spain over these overlapping Pacific claims.
Oh, wow. They eventually resolved it in Madrid,
and Spain effectively withdrew from the North
Pacific entirely. Today, the Spanish legacy in
Alaska is mostly just geographic place names.
Like the Malaspina Glacier. Exactly. Valdez Cordova.
OK, so by the mid 19th century, Russia's Sea
Otter ATM is basically running dry. The superior
otters are severely depleted. Russia is dealing
with heavy financial difficulties back home.
Oh, yeah. And they're terrified that Britain
is just going to seize Alaska anyway. So they
start looking for a buyer. Enter United States
Secretary of State William Seward. In 1867, he
orchestrates the purchase of the entire territory
for $7 .2 million. Which is what, about $0 .02
an acre? Roughly, yeah. And yet the American
public... absolutely hated the idea. They did.
They mocked it endlessly. They called it Seward's
Folly, Seward's Icebox, Andrew Johnson's Polar
Bear Garden, which is hilarious. Here's a great
name. They just couldn't fathom why America would
spend millions on what they saw as a frozen wasteland.
And. Honestly, the U .S. government acquired
this massive landmass and then had absolutely
no idea what to do with it. Right. During the
early years, which is known as the Department
of Alaska Era jurisdiction, it just awkwardly
bounced around. Who's in charge? Well, the Army
ran it first, then the Treasury Department, then
the Navy. It was basically an administrative
afterthought. See, here's where it gets really
interesting to me. The U .S. buys this massive
territory for pennies. completely ignores it
for decades, and then suddenly, boom, gold. Yeah.
It's like buying a junked car, letting it sit
in your driveway to rust for years. And then
one day, popping the trunk and finding it just
stacked with gold bars. That's a perfect analogy.
And the mechanism of how that gold rush happened
is crucial. The initial catalyst wasn't even
in Alaska. Right, it was in Canada. Yes, the
1896 Klondike Gold Rush in the neighboring Canadian
Yukon. But to get to the Yukon, tens of thousands
of prospectors had to funnel through Alaskan
ports, spawning these instant boom towns like
Skagway. Which brought a whole new kind of chaos
to the region. Total chaos. You have characters
like Alaska's outlaw, Sophie Smith. He was this
crime boss who literally ran a criminal empire
in Skagway, exploiting the influx of desperate
prospectors. Until he was finally killed by vigilantes
in a famous shootout. It was the Wild West, just
with more snow and way less law enforcement.
Exactly. And then the wealth shifted directly
into Alaska itself. In 1899, gold was found in
Nome, then Fairbanks. The population just surged.
But if we connect this to the bigger picture,
this era represents Alaska's second major cycle
of resource depletion. And it carried a very
dark ecological reality. Right. You're talking
about the whales. American whalers expanded into
Arctic waters to hunt bowhead whales. And they
did this with absolutely no regard for sustainability.
Exactly like the otters. They pushed the bowheads
to the very edge of extinction purely to harvest
the oil in their tissue. And this wasn't just
like an animal conservation issue, right? It
was a direct human survival issue. Absolutely.
The Aleuts relied heavily on the bowhead whale.
Yeah. Not just for food, but they used the whale
skins to cover their hunting boats. Right. Without
those specific skins, they couldn't build the
boats. And without the boats, they couldn't hunt
anything else. It's a chain reaction. Outsiders
were extracting wealth at the direct expense
of the indigenous people's ability to even survive.
It perfectly encapsulates that boom and bust
cycle we've been talking about. Yeah. get in,
take the most valuable resources fast as possible,
and leave the locals to deal with the systemic
fallout. So as the gold rushes start to kind
of cool off in the early 20th century, Alaska
is officially reorganized into a territory in
1912. But the people living there are still dealing
with this heavy feeling of being exploited by
outsiders. A massive source of that resentment
was the Jones Act of 1920. This was a federal
law that mandated all goods entering or leaving
Alaska had to be transported by American carriers.
Functionally, this forced almost all Alaskan
shipping to funnel directly through Seattle.
Which created a massive economic bottleneck.
A huge one. Seattle shipping businesses basically
had a government mandated monopoly. They could
just jack up their prices however they wanted.
Exactly. Alaskans were watching the wealth generated
by their own hard work being siphoned off to
Washington state. They wanted statehood to gain
some control. But the lower 48 just saw Alaska
as too sparse and too isolated. And that extreme
isolation was Alaska's defining characteristic.
I mean, the the only way to truly open up the
vast mountainous interior was through aviation.
Right. Bush pilots. Yes. But flying in Alaska
was and honestly still is incredibly dangerous
due to the unpredictable, fierce weather. To
this day, there are over 1700 aircraft wreck
sites scattered across the state. Which brings
us to the global crisis. that forced the rest
of the country to finally respect Alaska's strategic
value World War II. Yeah. And I have to say,
the fact that Japan actually invaded and occupied
part of North America during WWII completely
blows my mind. Most people don't know about it.
Why isn't this front and center in every history
class? It feels like the rest of the country
only started caring about Alaska when it suddenly
became a literal human shield. This raises an
important question about how geography dictates
geopolitics. In June 1942, Japanese forces bombed
Dutch Harbor. And shortly after, they invaded
and occupied two of the outer Aleutian Islands,
Atu and Kiska. Wow. The goal was to control the
northern Pacific routes. It was the only part
of the continental United States occupied by
an enemy during the entire war. And the human
cost to take it back was staggering. The battle
to retake Attu in May 1943 took two weeks of
intense, brutal fighting. There were 3 ,829 American
casualties. Just massive numbers. And a huge
chunk of those weren't even from combat. 1 ,200
soldiers suffered severe cold injuries and over
600 died from disease. The environmental conditions
were just as deadly as the enemy. And you know,
we also have to acknowledge the profound tragedy
of the Aleut people during this conflict. The
native villagers living on Atu were captured
by the Japanese and interned in Japan. That's
awful. Meanwhile, the U .S. government forcibly
evacuated other Aleuts from the islands and placed
them in internment camps down in southeast Alaska.
Right, their own government. Yes. And the conditions
provided by the federal government were entirely
inadequate, terrible food, lack of winter shelter,
and virtually no health care. Many Aleuts suffered
and died from preventable diseases during those
two years of internment. It's just a deeply dark
chapter. But WWII fundamentally changed Alaska's
trajectory, didn't it? It did. Suddenly, it wasn't
a forgotten icebox. It was a vital strategic
stronghold. The military poured money into bases.
They rushed to construct the Alaska -Canada military
highway, the Alcan, just to establish a secure
overland supply route. Anchorage doubled in size
in five years. The illusion of the distant, dependent
territory was completely shattered. Geopolitical
crises drive massive infrastructure, and that
infrastructure paved the way for political legitimacy.
When oil was subsequently discovered at Swanson
River on the Kenai Peninsula, proving the territory
could actually economically support itself, the
political tide finally turned. It was the tipping
point. Exactly. In 1958, President Eisenhower
signed the Alaska Statehood Act. And on January
3rd, 1959, Alaska officially became the 49th
state. They even adopted a visionary new state
motto in 1967. North to the future. I love that
motto. It captures that momentum perfectly. But
just as Alaska is flexing its new political muscles,
nature reminds everyone who is actually in charge.
Oh yes. On March 27, 1964, the Good Friday earthquake
hits. A magnitude 9 .2. 9 .2. That's almost unimaginable.
It churned the earth for four terrifying minutes.
It remains one of the most powerful earthquakes
ever recorded in human history. The physical
devastation is hard to even comprehend. It killed
139 people. mostly from the resulting tsunamis.
Coastal towns like Valdez and Chenegah were just
torn apart. And the land itself fundamentally
shifted. Wait, the geography actually changed.
Yes. The ocean uplift was so severe it permanently
destroyed ancient salmon streams. Wow. The fish
could no longer physically jump the newly created
geological barriers. Ships were lifted by massive
waves and dropped right over the docks into the
middle of towns. Is it an apocalyptic event?
It really was. But from the literal rubble of
that disaster. the state rebuilt. And shortly
after, in 1968, they stumbled upon a modern gold
that would define the next half -century. Oil.
Yep. Black gold. Specifically, the discovery
of massive reserves at Prudhoe Bay on the remote
north slope. But there was a massive logistical
catch. Oh boy. The oil was way up north on the
edge of the Arctic Ocean, and the nearest ice
-free port was Valdez, almost 800 miles to the
south. So they needed to build a pipeline. Exactly.
But before they could lay a single inch of pipe,
the federal government realized they had a roadblock.
They had to finally settle a long overdue question.
Who actually owned this land? Right, because
for decades, Alaska Natives have been fighting
for legal title to the lands taken from them.
The Prudhoe Bay discovery stalled completely
until those claims were resolved, because no
company was going to invest billions in a pipeline
on disputed territory. Not a chance. The result
was the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement
Act, or ANCSA, signed by Richard Nixon. It was
a totally unique approach to indigenous land
rights. Natives relinquished aboriginal claims
to the state in exchange for legal access to
44 million acres and a payment of 963 million
dollars. And the fascinating mechanism here is
how that was managed. They didn't just hand over
a check. The funds and land were to be managed
by newly created regional and village native
corporations. Yeah. So the hot oil wouldn't melt
the frozen ground and cause the entire structure
to just sink into the mud. It was completed in
1977 and the oil and the money started flowing.
Which brings us to a huge pivot. State leaders
looked at their history. The sea otters, the
whales, the gold. And they were determined not
to repeat the mistakes of the past. Exactly.
They knew oil was a finite resource. So to avoid
the inevitable bust, they amended the state constitution
in 1976 to create the Alaska Permanent Fund.
It functioned as an economic shock absorber.
Right. It's like setting up a massive trust fund
or endowment instead of going on a wild weekend
in Vegas. That's a great way to put it. Instead
of spending every dollar of oil revenue on daily
expenses and risking bankruptcy when oil prices
drop, you invest a percentage of it. And that
fund pays out annual dividends directly to the
residents. It connects the state's wealth to
the people. Yeah. And by 2005, that fund was
worth over $30 billion. It was incredibly forward
-thinking, but oil extraction carries immense
environmental risk. Yeah, it does. The tension
between industrial development and ecological
conservation quickly became the defining political
battle of modern Alaska. This tension was made
tragically clear on March 24, 1989, when the
tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground in Prince William
Sound. 11 million gallons of crude oil spilled
into the water. It coated 1 ,100 miles of pristine
coastline. The ecological damage was just staggering.
At least 300 ,000 sea birds and 2 ,000 otters
died. Devastating. Exxon spent $2 billion on
cleanup in the first year alone, but the long
-term harm to the ecology of the Sound lasted
for decades. The spill permanently brought environmentalism
to the forefront of Alaskan politics. By 1980,
the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation
Act had already protected massive swaths of the
state. Today, more than half of all Alaskan land
is owned by the federal government, and the state
contains two -thirds of all American national
park lands. And that dynamic leads to endless
legal and political tug of wars between the state
and the federal government. Take the Supreme
Court case from 2004. The EPA versus the Alaska
Department of Environmental Conservation, or
ADC. Right, the Tech Kaminko mine case. A mining
company wanted to expand zinc extraction, which
would boost the local economy. The state agency,
ADC, issued a permit, but the federal EPA stepped
in and blocked it. Overruling the state. Yes.
Arguing the state wasn't requiring the company
to use the best available control technology
to prevent air pollution, the state argued the
federal government was overreaching and stifling
state economic decisions. Right. The Supreme
Court ultimately sided with the EPA in a five
to four decision, cementing federal environmental
oversight over state developmental desires. It's
a constant balancing act. And nowhere is that
more obvious than the ongoing debate over drilling
in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge or ANWR.
Absolutely. The USGS found large deposits of
crude oil in a specific coastal plain there.
And looking objectively at the viewpoints laid
out in our research, and we're just here to map
those perspectives. We're not taking a side on
this. Right. Just looking at the facts. It's
a stark divide. You have Alaskan residents, trade
unions, and business interests who generally
support drilling there because it's a massive
financial lifeline for the state economy. On
the other hand, environmental groups and many
Democrats strongly oppose it due to the severe
ecological risks to a really fragile sanctuary.
And among Native Alaskan tribes, the support
is pretty mixed depending on their proximity
to the site and economic needs. It remains a
deeply complex political football, constantly
subject to filibusters and vetoes in Washington.
It is the perfect encapsulation of the modern
Alaskan dilemma. How do you weigh the immense
wealth of the earth beneath against the irreplaceable
value of the pristine wilderness above? Which
brings us into the 21st century. where Alaska's
defining trait, its extreme isolation, shows
up in entirely new ways. It really does. When
the COVID -19 pandemic arrived in March 2020,
the geography entirely dictated the response.
We saw this vividly in places like Ketchikan,
a remote coastal town of about 8 ,000 residents
in southeast Alaska. By late March, they had
identified a cluster of cases. And because of
their limited medical infrastructure and physical
isolation, the entire town had to strictly shelter
in place. Think about what that means. for you,
you know, living in a place like that. While
pipelines and aviation have connected Alaska
economically, geographically, it remains incredibly
vulnerable. Isolation is a double -edged sword.
Exactly. It can leave you completely cut off
when global supply lines freeze, just like the
Aleut stranded during the fur trade or the residents
of Autu during World War II. But that same isolation
demands an incredible level of self -reliance
and community resilience. Oh, absolutely. When
you are snowed in, hundreds of miles from the
nearest major hospital. Your neighbors are literally
all you have. The physical distance from the
lower 48 fundamentally shapes the Alaskan character.
It demands fierce independence, but also a deep
understanding that survival often requires collective
effort. So we've gone from the ancient land bridge
to the modern pandemic, from sea otters to whales
to gold to oil. It's been quite a journey. Alaska's
entire history. has been defined by these extreme
boom and bust cycles tightly tethered to extracting
resources for the outside world, which leaves
us with a final thought to mull over today, something
we all have to wonder about, right? What happens
to the great land when the global economy inevitably
transitions away from fossil fuels? That's the
big question. Will Alaska face its biggest, most
devastating economic bust yet? Or, in an increasingly
crowded hyper -connected world, will its 53 million
acres of preserved national parks, clean water,
and untouched wilderness become its most priceless
sustainable commodity? Maybe the quiet kid in
the back of the classroom still has a few surprises
left for us. That is a profound question. The
future of Alaska may well depend on whether it
continues to be valued primarily for what can
be taken from it or for what can be preserved
within it. A perfect place to leave it. Thanks
for taking this deep dive with us.