Alaska — a punchline that turned out to be a treasure

At 4am on 30 March 1867, US Secretary of State William Seward signed a treaty buying Alaska from Russia for $7.2 million — roughly two cents per acre. American newspapers mocked the deal mercilessly, branding the 586,412-square-mile territory "Seward's Icebox," "Seward's Folly," and, courtesy of President Andrew Johnson's critics, a "polar bear garden." Most Americans simply couldn't see the value in a frozen, distant, sparsely populated land they knew almost nothing about.

The mockery didn't age well. Gold discovered in the 1890s triggered a rush that reshaped the territory's population and economy; oil discovered decades later made Alaska one of the wealthiest states per capita in the country. Alaska finally became the 49th US state on 3 January 1959, and today it holds 17 of the 20 highest peaks in the United States, led by Denali — renamed from Mount McKinley in 2015 to honour its Athabascan name, meaning "The Great One" — which at 6,190 metres remains the tallest peak anywhere in North America.

What the three cameras show

Alaska beyond the webcams

Denali National Park: home to North America's tallest peak and vast subarctic wilderness.

Kenai Fjords National Park: glaciers calving directly into the sea, alongside whale and sea otter populations.

Brooks Falls: the Katmai National Park site famous for brown bears fishing for salmon each summer.

When to watch

Winter nights: for the aurora borealis, visible across much of interior Alaska during the darker months.

Getting there: Alaska is reached via Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport, Fairbanks International Airport, or Juneau International Airport, USA.