Fort Ross Case Study

I chose the “Fort Ross” to be the significant archaeological site in the United States. I am interested in the way it was established and the story of it. It is different and it mixes between American and Russian history and how Russia came to California. So it is kind of a mixture between American and Russian history.It is located on the Coast of Sonoma County. Speaking of its establishment, the Fort Ross was established on August 13, 1812. It was founded by the Russian American company. The Russians came to California in the 1780s and they settled on Kodiak Island, Alaska. The company’s ships were searching for sea otters, seal and sea lion pelts. They wanted to form colonies to trap the sea otters and harvest their pelts because they were …show more content…
His most important mission was to find the supplies; however, they still wanted to search for the fur to trade it. The Spanish authority was not happy to have them on their lands. And they did not want to help them. The trade with the Russians was even illegal, so that they would let them leave their country. However, Rezanov insisted on succeeding in trading in the area. He started trading Russian- made utensils and tools for wheat. He also got the Madrid approval to gain support to trade with Spanish California. What supported his goal more and promoted it was that he felt in love with a girl called Dona Concepcion. And they got married after many trials with the state, the church, and her father on the eve of his departure. But he died on his way to Russia, and his wife knew about his death after many years. She has been waiting him for a long time until she knew, and she never married after him. She was so loyal to him and she truly loved him although he was taking that marriage as a way of achieving a goal which is to expand the trading. Rezanov went back to his country with two major ideas in his mind from his adventure in Spanish California. The first one if that he wanted to form permanent trade relations there. The second was that he wanted to found a trading base on what the Russians referred to as the “New Albion” coast north of Spanish territory. With these two ideas, he went to Baranov to convince him of his ideas and how valuable and important they were. So Baranov sent Ivan kuskov ( an employee of long standing) on a voyage to find a site that suits them for their planned settlement. On January 8, 1804, Kusko arrived at Bodeha Bay and remained there until late August. He, with the assistance of his party of 40 Russians and 150 Alaskan natives studied and explored the whole region and they brought back with them more than