Mormon Alaska?

I did a search and didn't find anything.

Let's say instead of Utah the Mormons approached the Russian Empire to settle Alaska. Would this be possible? How would they deal with with eventual gold rush?

If the Russian Empire collapsed in the future would there be an independent Alaska?
 
The problem is timing. The Mormons needed a place to settle before 1850. It took twentieth century shipping and technology to develop any significant settlement on the south coast of Alaska. So to get there, the settlers would have to travel all the way to the Pacific and board ship to travel north. In OTL, they had a well-traveled trail that became the course for the transcontinental railroad in 1869, providing a modern conduit for settlers. Now, to their credit the Mormons did attract hard-working and creative people who could make advances in intensive farming, greenhouses, fish harvests, coal mining, etc. But they would need a good way to move people and raw materials in, and manufactured goods or packaged seafood out. That might work in the 20th century, but it is questionable in the 19th.
 
Didn't the Mormons moving west do so specifically looking for an inland sea?

Isn't that why Mormon Manitoba is so popular a trope?
 
IIRC Utah had conflicts between Mormons and later non-Mormons who went there for mining opportunities. Alaska would be even worse, in that the limited farmland is best for subsistence/ranching (hence the best solution is to export other goods and import food rather than try and be self-sufficient) and Alaska has way more gold and silver to attract more non-Mormons. Washington State or British Columbia would be better for the Mormons (the latter even has several notorious communities of fundamentalist Mormons who still practice polygamy to this day).
 
I think that @Mark E. has given a good explanation. What the LDS really wanted was space - open, under little to no Government control by any state, and unpopulated (by their reckoning, as with many in c19th, native populations didn't count). Why go all the way to Alaska when that is nearer at hand in the West? Where would they get the funds to make the purchase, even if the Russians were willing? And how would they attract second and third wave migrants - a very important part of the development of Utah - that far? It was hard enough slog to get them to Salt Lake City before the railway.

Then again, I will hold my hands up as a shameless Mormon Canada alt-historian, albeit AB/SK and not Manitoba...
https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/a-different-star-mormons-in-canada.379412/
 
Then again, I will hold my hands up as a shameless Mormon Canada alt-historian, albeit AB/SK and not Manitoba...
https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/a-different-star-mormons-in-canada.379412/
Actually, it would have been very logical, when they broke winter quarters in 1847, for the Mormons to have continued up the Missouri River, northward more than westward. They knew the river drained areas north of the 49th parallel, the northern US border. They would not have crossed the continental divide, a rather harrowing and uncertain journey. They would have remained isolated from other settled areas. There were accounts from the Lewis and Clark expedition to explain the conditions.
 
Actually, it would have been very logical, when they broke winter quarters in 1847, for the Mormons to have continued up the Missouri River, northward more than westward. They knew the river drained areas north of the 49th parallel, the northern US border. They would not have crossed the continental divide, a rather harrowing and uncertain journey. They would have remained isolated from other settled areas. There were accounts from the Lewis and Clark expedition to explain the conditions.

Basically this was the logic I followed - shorn of that near prophetic urge of Brigham Young's to move west, my feeling was that following the Missouri would have been the path of least resistence for the LDS. Hence ending up somewhere between OTL Moose Jaw and Medicine Hat.

Also an area of less hostile tribes at the time...
 
Also an area of less hostile tribes at the time...

A bunch of white people suddenly settling on their lands would certainly turn both the Blackfoot and Cree (the two powers in the area) hostile. This was a bit before the bison in that area had been totally depleted, so each side is still reasonably powerful. They'll need to conquer their "promised land" first, moreso than the OTL Mormons did in Utah.
 
Maybe Brigham Young thought this way. They wanted to leave the United States. To the north, it's the 49th parallel and the weather is cold. To the west, it was a matter of crossing the continental divide where the rivers flowed away from the east. So they found an inhabitable valley and stopped.

But had they chosen to go north, the first transcontinental railroad could have taken a very different course.
 
perhaps instead we could have it so Russia doesn't bother w. Alaska, then mormon missionaries go to the territory later and do their thing
 
Didn't the Mormons moving west do so specifically looking for an inland sea?
In the jargon of the time, the Great Lakes would have qualified as "inland seas." To find the Great Salt Lake was icing on the cake in terms of identifying a promised land.
 
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