Alaska, 1867: The Flag Changed at Sitka

The spire of St. Michael’s Cathedral rises above the low buildings on the left, with the shoreline and a steep, forested mountain beyond. Muybridge made this view in 1868, a year after the transfer. Russian colonial buildings still shaped the town that American officials had taken over. The photograph gives the ceremony a setting without pretending to show it: these are the streets and waters around the place where the flags had changed.

The same shoreline appears twice on this stereoscopic card, with trees in the foreground and ships beyond. Viewed through a stereoscope, the paired images would give an impression of depth. Muybridge’s title places the camera on Japanese Island, looking toward Sitka. Made in 1868, the card offered distant viewers a portable view of the newly acquired territory. The original mount and both photographs are retained here, rather than cropping the object down to a single scene.

This is a scan of a Treasury warrant, not a photograph taken in Alaska. Dated August 1, 1868, it authorized payment of $7.2 million to the Russian representative, Eduard de Stoeckl. The delay is easy to miss in a story usually reduced to the purchase price: Congress did not complete the appropriation until July 1868, long after the October 1867 handover. The elaborate printed form records the financial transaction that followed the diplomatic agreement and the ceremony at Sitka.