There were 35 states in the Union when the Louisiana Purchase treaty was signed on May 2, 1803. Part or all of 15 states were eventually created from the land deal, which is considered one of the most important achievements of Thomas Jefferson’s presidency.
Today the lands constituting the Louisiana Purchase are estimated to cover between 850,000 to 885,000 square miles. Areas once part of Louisiana form six states in their entirety:
Arkansas, Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma; most of the states of Louisiana, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado;
and sections of New Mexico and Texas.
At the time of the Purchase, small segments of the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan also were presumed part of the transaction.
On April 30, 1803, U.S. representatives in Paris agreed to pay $15 million for about 828,000 square miles of land that stretched from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains and from the Gulf of Mexico to Canada. This deal, known as the Louisiana Purchase, nearly doubled the size of the United States.
President Thomas Jefferson called it “an ample provision for our posterity and a widespread field for the blessings of freedom.” Yet it also had detractors on both the French and American sides. Explore eight facts about the wars, negotiating tactics and lucky coincidences that made the Louisiana Purchase possible at History.com.