This Sunday, October 18th, is Alaska Day, the anniversary of the afternoon in 1867 when Russia's flag came down and the Stars and Stripes went up over Sitka. It's a ceremony most Americans have never heard about, and according to the accounts that have been passed down, it didn't go smoothly.

The Purchase

In March 1867, the United States agreed to buy Alaska from Russia for $7.2 million, a price that works out to about two cents an acre. Critics at the time mocked the deal as "Seward's Folly," after Secretary of State William Seward, who pushed hard for it. Russia was happy to sell a distant territory it struggled to defend, and the treaty was ratified that spring. All that remained was the handoff.

The Ceremony at Sitka

On October 18, 1867, Russian and American troops gathered on Castle Hill in Sitka for the formal transfer. The plan was simple: lower the Russian flag, raise the American one, and fire a salute. Russian soldiers began lowering their flag down the pole, and then, as the story goes, it snagged in the rigging near the top and wouldn't come down.

A Flag That Wouldn't Let Go

Accounts differ on the details, but they agree on the moment. A soldier was sent up the pole to free it, the flag eventually came loose and dropped onto the bayonets of the troops below, and the ceremony carried on. A moment that was meant to be tidy and formal turned into a scramble, and it's remembered in Alaska as part of the story of the day.

From Territory to State, and a Flag Designed by a Teenager

Alaska remained a territory for nearly a century before becoming the 49th state on January 3, 1959. Its state flag has a story of its own. In 1927, a 13-year-old boy named Benny Benson, living at an orphanage in Seward, won a territory-wide contest with a simple design: eight gold stars on a field of blue, seven forming the Big Dipper and one for the North Star. It's still the flag Alaska flies today.

Why It's Worth Remembering

Most flag-raising stories are about victory. This one is about a quiet change of ownership that nearly everyone at the time underestimated, and a flag that seemed reluctant to go. A purchase that was ridiculed in 1867 turned out to be one of the most consequential land deals in American history.