|
Yukon/Alaska Chronology:
1800 - 1875
- 1802
- New Archangel, the Russian settlement at present-day Sitka is sacked by Tlingit Indians, and most of the inhabitants killed.
- 1812
- - March: The Russian American Company establishes a post at Fort Ross, California to grow crops for their Alaska operations.
- 1816
- Georg Anton Schäffer obtains fishing rights, livestock, and a land grant to establish a post on Oahu for the Russian American Company.
- 1825
- Great Britain and Russia agree that the 141st meridian shall be the boundary between the interior sections of their territories. This agreement was honoured when Alaska and the Yukon were formed, although the dispute regarding interpretation of the boundary along the coast was not settled until 1903.
- 1826
- Sir John Franklin and his crew become the first white men to see Herschel Island, off the north coast (the only coast) of the Yukon.
- 1839
- The Hudson's Bay Company signs an agreement with the Russian American Company to supply Sitka with provisions. Three years later, the Russian operation at Fort Ross was sold.
- 1846
- The Hudson's Bay Company builds Lapierre House on the Bell River, their first post west of the Richardson Mountains.
- 1848
- - The first American whaling ship, the barque Superior, enters the Bering Sea and discovers the huge population of bowhead and other whales. A maritime "gold rush" followed in 1849, with 154 ships joining the hunt.
- - September: The Hudson's Bay Company builds Fort Selkirk, at the confluence of the Pelly and Yukon Rivers.
- 1852
- - August 21: Fort Selkirk is destroyed by a group of Tlingits who objected to the Hudson's Bay Company trying to break the Tlingit monopoly on trade with the interior tribes.
- 1865
- Works starts on Perry McDonough Collins' dream, an Overland Telegraph line joining the United States to Europe, via Siberia. The project collapsed with the completion of a trans-Atlantic telegraph cable in July 1866.
- 1867
- - March 30: The United States buys Alaska from Russia, for $7.2 million.
- - July 23: Alaska's first post office is authorized, to be opened at Sitka.
- - October 18: Official transfer ceremonies at Sitka.
- 1868
July 27: The Customs Act is amended to include Alaska. - The first salmon saltery in Alaska is built at Klawock, on Prince of Wales Island. The first canneries opened at Klawock and Sitka in 1878.
- 1869
- Kohklux, chief of the Chilkat Indian village of Klukwan, meets American scientist George Davidson, who is on the Chilkat River to view a total eclipse of the sun. When Davidson's prediction that the sun would disappear on October 7 came true, Kohklux was so impressed that he drew him an incredibly detailed map of a vast part of the interior of the Yukon and Alaska.
- 1871
- - September: Of the 41 whaling ships hunting in the Bering Sea, 32 are trapped by early ice; all of the 1,200 people on the ships escaped, but 31 of the ships were destroyed the following spring.
- 1873
- As gold prospectors continue to head further and further north, a discovery is made near Dease Lake, in northern British Columbia. The Cassiar gold rush, though erratic, brought several hundred prospectors to the edge of the Yukon and Alaska.
1800 AD - 1875
Site search Web search |
|
|
|
|