When Did Alaska Become a State? Tennessee Plan and 1958 Act

Alaska became a state on January 3, 1959, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed Proclamation 3269 at one minute past noon and admitted the territory to the Union “on an equal footing with the other States.”¹ It was the 49th state. The proclamation followed the Alaska Statehood Act, which Eisenhower had signed into law roughly six months earlier, on July 7, 1958.²

Getting to that date took more than ninety years.

From Russian Colony to American Territory

The United States bought Alaska from Russia in 1867. Secretary of State William Seward and Russian Minister Eduard de Stoeckl agreed to a price of $7.2 million on March 30 of that year — about two cents an acre for 586,412 square miles.³ The Senate approved the treaty on April 9 by a vote of 37 to 2, President Andrew Johnson signed it on May 28, and the formal transfer took place at Sitka on October 18, 1867.⁴

The purchase was mocked at the time as “Seward’s Folly,” and it was vindicated commercially in 1896 when the Klondike gold strike turned Alaska into the gateway to the Yukon.³ October 18 has been commemorated as Alaska Day since the territorial legislature adopted it as a holiday in 1917.⁵

Why Statehood Took Ninety Years

For decades after the purchase, Alaska had almost no civil government. The territory sat under nominal U.S. Army jurisdiction, and when the 1890s gold rush brought miners pouring in, they organized their own “miners’ meetings” to settle disputes because no courts existed.⁶

The First Organic Act of 1884 created the District of Alaska and installed a District Court that enforced the laws of Oregon, but it set up no legislature and gave Alaskans no delegate in Congress.⁷ Congress enacted a civil and criminal code in 1899 and 1900, and the Second Organic Act of 1912 finally created the Territory of Alaska with an elected legislature.⁶

Even then, home rule was thin. By the 1940s the territorial legislature met for just 60 days every other year. The governor was appointed by the president. Alaska’s one delegate in the U.S. House could introduce bills but could not vote. Congress reserved the power to overturn any territorial law, and the federal government controlled more than 90 percent of the land.⁶

The first statehood bill, H.R. 13978, was introduced on March 30, 1916, by Alaska’s Delegate to Congress, Judge James Wickersham.⁸ It went nowhere, and so did the bills that followed for the next four decades. Southern members of Congress worried that new states would shift the political balance, and others doubted that a remote territory with a small population belonged in the Union.

How Alaskans Forced the Issue

The push that finally succeeded was built in the territory itself during the 1950s.

Ernest Gruening, Territorial Governor from 1939 to 1953, became known as “the father of Alaska statehood” and framed the territory’s status as “American colonialism” in a 1955 speech that echoed the Revolution’s complaint about taxation without representation.⁹¹⁰ E.L. “Bob” Bartlett, Alaska’s non-voting delegate in Congress, coordinated support on Capitol Hill.

Writing a State Constitution Before There Was a State

In 1955 the territorial legislature appropriated $300,000 to hold a constitutional convention.¹¹¹²¹³ Alaskan voters ratified it on April 24, 1956.

The Alaska-Tennessee Plan

Borrowing a tactic Tennessee had used before its own admission, Alaskans elected a shadow congressional delegation in 1956 to travel to Washington and demand to be seated. Voters chose Ernest Gruening and William A. Egan as unauthorized U.S. “Senators” and Ralph Rivers as a “Representative.”¹⁴ They had no official standing, but they kept the issue visible in the capital.

Public Pressure

Edna Ferber’s pro-statehood novel Ice Palace, published in March 1958 and set in a fictionalized Fairbanks, sold 75,000 copies on release and was cited in editorials across the country.¹⁵ Gruening later said the novel helped “stiffen many a congressional spine,” and public attention helped move the statehood bill out of the House Rules Committee, which had been blocking it.¹⁶

The Statehood Act of 1958

In Congress, opponents led by Senator Strom Thurmond argued that admitting a noncontiguous territory would “dilute the authority and strength of the Union” and that Alaska’s remoteness made it hard to defend. Supporters, including Senators Richard Neuberger, Warren Magnuson, and Thomas Kuchel, countered that denying Alaskans full citizenship was unfair and that air travel had made the territory accessible.¹⁷

The Alaska Statehood Act, H.R. 7999, passed the House on May 28, 1958, and the Senate on June 30, 1958, by a vote of 64 to 20.¹⁴ Eisenhower signed it on July 7, 1958.²

His support had been reluctant. As a former wartime commander, he was slow to give up federal control over land he saw as critical to defending against the Soviet Union, and as a Republican he expected Alaska to send Democrats to Washington. He eventually conditioned his support for Alaska on Congress also taking up Hawaii, which Republicans expected to favor their party. He signed the Alaska bill privately, reportedly to avoid being photographed with its Democratic backers, remarking, “Ok, now that’s 49.”¹⁸

The Act set the terms Alaska would enter under. It gave the new state two U.S. Senators and one Representative.¹⁹ It authorized Alaska to select up to 102,550,000 acres of vacant, unappropriated federal land, plus 400,000 acres from national forests and 400,000 from other public lands.²⁰ It required the state to disclaim any claim to land held in trust for Alaska Natives, which remained under federal jurisdiction until Congress acted. It let the president set aside special defense withdrawals in northern and western Alaska. It kept federal management of fisheries and wildlife in place until the Secretary of the Interior certified that the state had its own conservation framework. The Native land question was left unresolved and was eventually settled by the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, signed by President Nixon on December 18, 1971.²¹

The First State Government

William A. Egan, who had presided over the constitutional convention and served as one of the Tennessee Plan “Senators,” was elected Alaska’s first governor and took office on January 3, 1959. He was sworn in alongside U.S. Senators Bob Bartlett and Ernest Gruening and Representative Ralph Rivers, the same three men who had spent years lobbying Congress without official standing.²² Egan fell seriously ill shortly after his inauguration and did not take up his full duties for about four months.²³

And Then Hawaii

Alaska’s admission is often remembered next to Hawaii’s, because the two moved as a political pair. Hawaii followed quickly: the Senate passed the Hawaii Admissions Act on March 11, 1959, by 75 to 15, the House on March 12 by 323 to 89, Eisenhower signed it on March 18, and Hawaii officially became the 50th state on August 21, 1959.²⁴ No state has been admitted since.

1
The American Presidency Project. Proclamation 3269 — Admission of the State of Alaska Into the Union
2
Eisenhower Presidential Library. Alaska Statehood
3
U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian. Alaska Purchase
4
U.S. Senate. Sumner’s Alaskan Project
5
Office of the Governor, State of Alaska. Alaska Day
6
American Historical Association. How Is Alaska Governed?
7
University of Alaska Fairbanks. Early Years in Alaska After Purchase
8
Eisenhower Presidential Library. Alaska Statehood Statement
9
University of Alaska Fairbanks. Alaska Statehood Research Guide
10
National Park Service. Alaskan Statehood and the Cold War
11
Alaska State Legislature. 22nd Territorial Legislature
12
University of Alaska. Constitutional Convention
13
Alaska Court System. Constitutional Convention Records
14
Alaska Historical Society. Alaska FAQs
15
Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. Edna Ferber’s Ice Palace Played a Role in Alaska Statehood
16
EBSCO Research Starters. Alaska Statehood
17
U.S. Senate, Office of Senator Murkowski. On This Date in 1958, Senate Vote Secured Alaska’s Future
18
Anchorage Daily News. Eisenhower Was Reluctant Supporter of Alaska Statehood
19
Yale Law School, Avalon Project. Alaska Statehood Act
20
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. Alaska Statehood Law
21
Alaska Federation of Natives. Perspectives From AFN
22
University of Alaska. Alaska Government Officials
23
The New York Times. Alaska’s Guiding Force: William Allen Egan
24
National Constitution Center. The Last Time Congress Created a New State