Timeline of The Polar Bear Republic

• 100 Million BC - Land masses collided about this time and created Alaska.
  
• 8,000 BC - Ice Age ending - rising waters cover land bridge.
  
• 28 Jan 1725 Peter the Great dies and Empress Catherine becomes head of Russia.
  
• 4 June 1741 Vitus Bering on the St. Peter and Alexei Chirikov on the St. Paul set sail from Kamchatka, Siberia. On June 20 they lose sight of each other in a storm and continue on their separate voyages.
  
• 18 July 1741 Vitus Bering sights Mount St. Elias in North America. He and his men were shipwrecked on Avacha Island off of Kamchatka and many died of disease and lack of food..
  
• 15 July 1741 Chirikov sights land and drops the anchor of the St. Paul. After losing two crews sent to shore to explore, he continues on to Unalaska and probably the island of Adak. He also loses some of his crew to disease and scurvy, before returning to Kamchatka.
  
• 8 Dec 1741 Bering dies on the island of Avacha and is buried there. The island is later renamed Bering Island.
  
• 1745 Russian fur traders first sight Attu and land there to trade with the natives. Several natives were killed.
  
• early 1760s Unalaska natives, tired of attrocities committed upon them by the Russians, strike back. Four Russian ships were destroyed.
  
• 1768 Pribalof discovers the seal islands in the Bering Sea, north of the Aleutians that now bear his name.
  
• 1774 Spanish navigator Juan Perez sailed from California to Prince William Sound. He is driven back by storms, but the Spanish returned in the Sonora the following year, venturing as far as Mt. Edgecume near Sitka.
  
• 1778 British Captain James Cook explores the Alaskan coast, seeking the Northwest Passage back to the Atlantic. On the Discovery he maps and names Mount Edgecumbe, Prince William Sound, Bristol Bay and Norton Bay. On the way back to England his crew almost mutinied, wanting to go back to Alaska, after stopping in China and discovering how much sea otter pelts were worth.
  
• 19 Aug 1790 Aleksandr Andreevich Baranoff embarks for Alaska. He is shipwrecked off of Unalaska. 5 of his crew members were killed by the Kolosh natives and the remainder nearly starved to death while spending winter there. The following spring he and his men travel by sealskin boats to Three Saints, arriving in June of 1791.
  
• 1791-1795 British Captain George Vancouver explores Northwest Coast exhaustively with two ships, but finds no Northwest Passage 1799 - Aleksandr Baranov consolidates Russian possession of Alaska with fort and trading base at Sitka. Two French ships visit Alaska - one reaching Frenchman's Bay and the other Sitka Bay.
  
• 1797 United American Company formed as a merger of 19 traders and trading companies to trade, explore, colonize and Christianize Alaska.
  
• July 1799 Czar Paul grants a charter to Shelekhov's Russian-American Company for exclusive rights in the fur trade in Alaska. Baranov leads 1110 men to Sitka. After purchasing land from the Tlingits, they begin to build the town of New Archangel. New Archangel is later renamed Sitka.
  
• Apr 1800 Baranov returns to Kodiak. In his absence the Tlingits burn New Archangel, killing and capturing some 600 people. New Archangel (later Sitka) is recaptured and rebuilt, two years later.
  
• 10 Sep 1812 Russians complete the settlement of Fort Ross (Russ) on Bodega Bay, north of the Russian River in California. This settlement was founded to provide foodstocks for Sitka, AK.
  
• 1820 Czar Alexander declared that Russian influence in North America extended as far south as Oregon and closed Alaskan waters to foreigners.
  
• 1821 Tlingits are allowed to return and rebuild a village at Sitka on their pre-empted land. Their new settlement is called The Ranche.
  
• 1824 Treaty signed between the United States and Russia which designates the southern border of Russian America at 54°40'. This treaty also re-opened all harbors in the region to fishing and trading.
  
• 1824 Ivan Popov, later known as Ioann Veniaminov arrives at Unalaska as a missionary. While he preaches he learns the Aleut language and creates an Aleut dictionary.
  
• 22 Feb 1825, Russia and Britain established the Alaska/Canada boundary.
  
• 1834 Ivan Popov, later known as Ioann Veniaminov moves from the Aleutians to Sitka and learns the Tlingit language in order to minister the natives.
  
• 1841 Ivan Popov is appointed Bishop of Russia America and Siberia and is re-named Ioann Veniaminov.
  
• 1848 The onion-domed St. Michael's Cathedral is built in Sitka.
  
• April 1865 - Conspirators assasinate US President Abraham Lincoln, Vice-President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State Willaim Seward. Secretary of Defense Edward M Stanton, the next in line of succession becomes the 17th President of the United States.

And then things start to get weird.




Last Updated 22-JUL-2005