ECONOMIC PROFILE

Overview of the Calista Regional Economy

The year 1741 generally marks the beginning of contact between Western society and the indigenous peoples of Alaska. This was the year Vitus Bering and his second-in-command, Aleksi Chirikov, sailed two ships from Kamchatka to North America. Over the next 100-years the Russians learned a great deal about the geography of Alaska. There were more than 60 Russian voyages to “Russian America” before Russia sold it to the United States in 1867.