A Town for an Empire

Starting in the 1740s, Russians were drawn to Alaska's coast by abundant, valuable sea otters. Russia claimed Alaska and chartered the Russian-American Company, which monopolized the fur trade and expanded the empire. The company's manager, Alexander Baranov, established a fort near present-day Sitka in 1799 before going to company headquarters in Kodiak, but the Tlingit later burned the fort in 1802. In 1804, Baranov returned to Sitka Sound and, after a brief battle, established Novoarkhangel'sk, or New Archangel, which became the capital of Russian America in 1808. A new fort was built on this hill, with a governor's house at the top and workshops farther down, and the settlement expanded from there into what is now Sitka. Novoarkhangel'sk became the most important and affluent port town in Russian America. In 1821, Russia required Russian-American Company managers to be naval officers and to take a wife with them to Sitka, helping gentrify Sitka society. As overhunting caused sea otter declines, Alaska and the other Russian-American colonies became costly to maintain, and in 1867 Russia sold Alaska to the United States.

Sitka, Alaska · United States