50 Fun Facts About Louisiana Purchase

Which president, in office from 1801, approved the Louisiana Purchase after first seeking only a single port city?

Thomas Jefferson soon sent expeditions to chart the new land, whose boundaries no treaty had ever defined.

Which French leader sold the Louisiana Purchase lands to the United States while expecting a new war with Britain?

Napoleon Bonaparte had regained Louisiana only in 1800, trading lands in Tuscany for it as part of a plan to rebuild a French empire in North America.

What price did the United States pay France for the Louisiana Purchase, a sum it had to borrow from European banks?

$15 million worked out to less than three cents an acre. The young republic had no such sum in its treasury, so it borrowed at six percent interest.

What did the Louisiana Purchase, which added about 828,000 square miles, do to the overall size of the United States?

The deal nearly doubled it, and land from fifteen present-day states was eventually carved out of the new territory.

Which two army officers led the Corps of Discovery across the Louisiana Purchase and on to the Pacific Ocean in 1805?

Lewis and Clark lost only one man on the whole journey, a sergeant who died of apparent appendicitis three months after setting out.

Which Native American teenager crossed the Louisiana Purchase with explorers while carrying her infant son on her back?

Sacagawea reassured the nations the explorers met simply by being there: a group travelling with a woman and a baby was plainly not looking for a fight.

On which American holiday in 1803 was the Louisiana Purchase publicly announced?

Independence Day gave the news a fitting stage, though the treaty papers themselves took another ten days to reach Washington.

The Louisiana Purchase took in small corners of which two Canadian provinces, later handed to Britain in a border deal?

Alberta and Saskatchewan hold the upper reaches of streams that flow south, and the Purchase was defined by a watershed, not by a line on a map.

Which sporting event, the first of its kind on American soil, was part of the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition?

The Summer Olympics had been awarded to Chicago, but the fair's hosts threatened to stage a rival meet and the Games were moved.

Which port city were American envoys sent to buy in 1803 before France offered the whole Louisiana Purchase instead?

New Orleans controlled the outlet for western farmers' crops, so the envoys were stunned to be offered a vast territory when they had come for a port.

Which river marked the eastern edge of the Louisiana Purchase, which covered most land draining into it from the west?

The Mississippi had divided the continent's empires since the 1760s, when Spain took the lands to its west and Britain those to its east.

Which mountain range formed the rough western limit of the Louisiana Purchase, where rivers stop flowing east?

The Rocky Mountains made a natural border because the deal covered a river basin, though the exact western line stayed in dispute until 1819.

In which city did envoys sign the Louisiana Purchase treaty in spring 1803, weeks before the news crossed the Atlantic?

Paris hosted the signing at a mansion called the Hôtel Tubeuf, and the Americans agreed fast, fearing the offer could be withdrawn at any time.

Which state's 1821 admission came with a ban on slavery across the remaining northern lands of the Louisiana Purchase?

Missouri entered as a slave state alongside free Maine, and the line drawn across the Purchase stood until Congress effectively repealed it in 1854.

A slave uprising in which French Caribbean colony, now a nation, helped lead to the Louisiana Purchase?

Haiti was then Saint-Domingue, a sugar colony that had made France enormously rich; without its revenues, Louisiana was of little value.

Which disease wiped out much of the French army sent to the Caribbean in 1802, helping bring on the Louisiana Purchase?

Yellow fever killed thousands of French soldiers within months and then their commander, the brother-in-law of France's ruler.

Which former vice president was tried for treason in 1807 over an alleged plot to seize Louisiana Purchase land?

Aaron Burr was arrested on the president's orders but acquitted at trial, and the affair destroyed what was left of his political career.

Which political party opposed the Louisiana Purchase, fearing new western states would weaken New England's influence?

The Federalists had members who went further: a group led by a Massachusetts senator explored forming a separate northern confederacy.

Which city hosted the 1904 world's fair named the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, which opened a year behind schedule?

St. Louis had planned the fair for the 1903 centennial, then delayed the opening so that more states and foreign countries could take part.

Which 630-foot stainless-steel monument anchors a national park first created to commemorate the Louisiana Purchase?

The Gateway Arch is exactly as wide as it is tall, a curve its architect said he began with mathematics and finished by eye.

Which future president was sent abroad as a special envoy in 1803 and helped sign the Louisiana Purchase treaty?

James Monroe carried a fallback plan: if the talks failed, he was to go on to London and negotiate an alliance with Britain instead.

Which Kentucky frontiersman was serving Spain as a local judge when the Louisiana Purchase made his home American?

Daniel Boone had moved west in 1799 to land Spain was so keen to settle that it ignored its own rule that immigrants be Catholic.

Which army explorer of the southwestern Louisiana Purchase was seized by Spanish troops in 1807 and taken to Chihuahua?

Zebulon Pike had tried a few months earlier to climb the Colorado summit now named for him, giving up in waist-deep snow.

Which US coin received two new reverse designs in 2004 to mark the bicentennial of the Louisiana Purchase?

The nickel first showed a design adapted from the peace medals once struck for Native leaders; its familiar look did not return until 2006.

What does the state of Louisiana call its counties, a legacy of the colony bought in the Louisiana Purchase?

Parishes followed the colony's old church districts; American officials first split the territory into twelve counties, but the older units won out.

Which state preserves the swamp where surveyors set the starting point for mapping the Louisiana Purchase in 1815?

Arkansas forgot the spot for a century, until surveyors working a county line in 1921 stumbled on the two marked trees.

Which 1830 law, signed by Andrew Jackson, used Louisiana Purchase land to resettle Native nations forced from the East?

The Indian Removal Act led to more than 60,000 people from at least 18 tribes being forced west, the Cherokee along what became the Trail of Tears.

Which future state did the United States claim as part of the Louisiana Purchase until renouncing it in an 1819 treaty?

Texas stayed Spanish under that bargain, though Henry Clay and other critics demanded that it be handed over as well.

What did the president consider seeking to legalise the Louisiana Purchase before his cabinet talked him out of it?

A constitutional amendment proved unnecessary once his advisers pointed out that the president already held the power to negotiate treaties.

Which 1857 Supreme Court case ruled that Congress never had the power to ban slavery in the northern Louisiana Purchase?

Dred Scott v. Sandford came three years after Congress had itself scrapped the ban, and both steps pushed the country toward civil war.

Which American minister to France negotiated the Louisiana Purchase and later helped develop the first viable steamboat?

Robert Livingston had also sworn in George Washington as the first president, fourteen years before he sat down to bargain for Louisiana.

Which French foreign minister, a former bishop, did what he could to prevent the Louisiana Purchase from going ahead?

Talleyrand lost the argument: the ruler he served handed the bargaining to his treasury minister, and the treaty was signed within weeks.

Which London bank bought the American bonds that funded the Louisiana Purchase, while Britain was about to fight France?

Barings worked with Hope & Co. of Amsterdam, buying the American bonds at a discount and paying the French in monthly instalments.

Which French explorer canoed to the Gulf of Mexico in 1682 and claimed the land later sold in the Louisiana Purchase?

Sieur de La Salle named the whole river basin for his king, and was killed five years later in an ambush by mutineers from his own expedition.

France secretly gave Louisiana to Spain in 1762 near the end of which war, four decades before the Louisiana Purchase?

The French and Indian War had just cost France Canada, and the handover stayed secret for two years, even from colonists moving to Louisiana to stay French.

Which line of latitude replaced the Louisiana Purchase's ragged northern edge under an 1818 treaty with Britain?

The 49th parallel won out because a straight line was far easier to survey across open prairie than a border that followed watersheds.

In which present-day state did the Corps of Discovery build Fort Mandan for its first winter in the Louisiana Purchase?

North Dakota's winter held the explorers at the fort until April 1805, when they set off upriver again in pirogues.

Which Nebraska city on Louisiana Purchase land was a village called Lancaster before it replaced Omaha as the capital?

Lincoln was renamed for the murdered president when it became the capital, on a site where buffalo could still be seen in the 1860s.

Which Iowa capital, on Louisiana Purchase land, grew from an 1843 army fort built where two rivers meet?

Des Moines nearly had a very different name: the captain who built the fort wanted to call it Fort Raccoon, but the War Department refused.

Which breed was Seaman, the dog bought in Pittsburgh that crossed the Louisiana Purchase with the Corps of Discovery?

A Newfoundland suited river travel, being a strong swimmer; Seaman was stolen once along the way and quickly recovered.

From 1804 the upper Louisiana Purchase was briefly run from which neighbouring territory under William Henry Harrison?

Indiana's governor and judges were to hold court in the district twice a year, an arrangement locals protested and Congress ended after nine months.

Which secret agreement of 1800 returned Louisiana from Spain to France, three years before the Louisiana Purchase?

The Treaty of San Ildefonso promised Spain Italian lands in return, and a short-lived kingdom was duly created there for a son-in-law of the Spanish royal family.

Which privilege, won from Spain in 1795, let Americans store export goods at the Louisiana Purchase's chief port?

Right of deposit mattered so much to western farmers that Spain's revoking it caused an uproar, since the river was their main road to market.

Which 1819 agreement fixed the Louisiana Purchase's southwestern border with a stair-step line running to the Pacific?

The Adams–Onís Treaty drew what became known as the Step Boundary, giving the United States its first border to reach across the continent.

Which French treasury minister, husband of a Pennsylvania governor's daughter, negotiated the Louisiana Purchase treaty?

Barbé-Marbois was rewarded with a generous cash gift from his ruler, and in 1829 he published his own history of the territory and its sale.

In which building on today's Jackson Square was the Louisiana Purchase land formally handed over in December 1803?

The Cabildo ceremony came just three weeks after France itself had formally taken the colony over from Spain.

An 1823 army map labelled the Louisiana Purchase plains, judged unfit for farming, the Great American what?

Desert was an odd word for it: an earlier map of the same plains noted innumerable herds of buffalo, and much of the region is farmland today.

What did the president's written orders tell the Corps of Discovery to seek as it crossed the Louisiana Purchase?

A water trade route was the dream, but the explorers found a wall of mountains where they had hoped to carry boats from one river to the next.

Which Louisiana capital stayed under Spanish rule after the Louisiana Purchase until rebels stormed its fort in 1810?

Baton Rouge joined the short-lived Republic of West Florida, which the United States annexed within three months, insisting the land had been part of the deal all along.

Which fur-trading firm held Rupert's Land, the British territory that bordered the Louisiana Purchase to the north?

The Hudson's Bay Company had held its royal charter since 1670, and in the end it sold the whole vast domain to Canada.