katchen
Banned
That's the great thing about a list like this. Always someone on it who knows a little more about a given area and situation from having been there or have had relatives who were there.
OK. Nome's gold was inland but Juneau's gold, though small, was close to the ocean and close to Sitka. Did the Russians ever get wind of it?
And what about Valdez? Wasn't there a gold deposit near there as well? Wasn't that the reason Valdez was founded?
It wouldn't take much of a gold rush to spark interest in Alaska in the 1850s during the Crimean War. Especially since the Russians were anxious to sell to the US at the time or shortly thereafter and made President Buchanan an offer that went nowhere.
And the Russians DID know about gold deposits in the Kolyma Basin, at least by the 1900s and probably sooner that they were keeping secret. For one thing, the Boyar or Boyars who had been granted the land in the area were very conservative and unwilling to sell or even try to develop the area. But during the Crimean War the British were besieging Petropavlovsk Kamchatsky, the largest settlement east of the Lena River. So the Russians had to worry about losing the area anyway. Might as well tell the Americans what they knew, sweeten the deal (which would also give the Americans a land border in Northeast Asia very close to China and a sea border very close to Japan--attractive to shipping interests--and keep it out of the clutches of the British while cementing closer economic relations with the US.
Who knows? It might be possible to get a trans-Siberian railroad or two or three out of the deal.
And that, by the way, a Trans-Siberian Railroad built 30 years earlier than IOTL privately, probably by Southern Pacific is a much more feasible scenario than an Alaskan gold rush during the Crimean War. If Tsar Alexander had been thinking along those lines by say, 1865, the railroad could have easily been up and running by 1873. It did not have to take 12 years to build the way it did IOTL. By bringing in rail and supplies to construction locations from Tyumen to Omsk, Tomsk, and Yenseisk via the Ob-Yensei system and by various locations up and down the Amur and Ussuri Rivers by water, it is likely that the Trans-Siberian could have been completed in 5 years--which would have made Russia's Great Game in Central Asia in the 1860s-1870s that much easier.
OK. Nome's gold was inland but Juneau's gold, though small, was close to the ocean and close to Sitka. Did the Russians ever get wind of it?
And what about Valdez? Wasn't there a gold deposit near there as well? Wasn't that the reason Valdez was founded?
It wouldn't take much of a gold rush to spark interest in Alaska in the 1850s during the Crimean War. Especially since the Russians were anxious to sell to the US at the time or shortly thereafter and made President Buchanan an offer that went nowhere.
And the Russians DID know about gold deposits in the Kolyma Basin, at least by the 1900s and probably sooner that they were keeping secret. For one thing, the Boyar or Boyars who had been granted the land in the area were very conservative and unwilling to sell or even try to develop the area. But during the Crimean War the British were besieging Petropavlovsk Kamchatsky, the largest settlement east of the Lena River. So the Russians had to worry about losing the area anyway. Might as well tell the Americans what they knew, sweeten the deal (which would also give the Americans a land border in Northeast Asia very close to China and a sea border very close to Japan--attractive to shipping interests--and keep it out of the clutches of the British while cementing closer economic relations with the US.
Who knows? It might be possible to get a trans-Siberian railroad or two or three out of the deal.
And that, by the way, a Trans-Siberian Railroad built 30 years earlier than IOTL privately, probably by Southern Pacific is a much more feasible scenario than an Alaskan gold rush during the Crimean War. If Tsar Alexander had been thinking along those lines by say, 1865, the railroad could have easily been up and running by 1873. It did not have to take 12 years to build the way it did IOTL. By bringing in rail and supplies to construction locations from Tyumen to Omsk, Tomsk, and Yenseisk via the Ob-Yensei system and by various locations up and down the Amur and Ussuri Rivers by water, it is likely that the Trans-Siberian could have been completed in 5 years--which would have made Russia's Great Game in Central Asia in the 1860s-1870s that much easier.