Louisiana Purchase

<p><strong>APRIL 30: Louisiana Purchase&nbsp;</strong></p><p><em>Profile America </em>— Saturday, April 30th. This is the 219th anniversary of perhaps the&nbsp;greatest real estate deal in American history — one that doubled the size of the nation,&nbsp;putting it in position to become a world power. The year was 1803, and the deal was the&nbsp;Louisiana Purchase. The young United States bought nearly 830,000 square miles from&nbsp;France at the cost of four cents an acre. The land stretched from the Mississippi River&nbsp;to the Rocky Mountains and from the Gulf of Mexico to the Canadian border. The sale&nbsp;encompassed all or parts of 14 of today’s states. Appropriately enough, Louisiana&nbsp;became a state on this date in 1812. At the time, just 77,000 people lived there. Now,&nbsp;Louisiana is home to nearly 4.66 million<em>. Profile America </em>has completed 25 years as a&nbsp;public service of the U.S. Census Bureau.&nbsp;</p><h2>Sources:</h2><p><a href="http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/american_originals/louistxt.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Treaty, accessed 9/2/2021</a></p><p><a href="https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/louisiana-purchase-treaty" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Scope, accessed 9/2/2021</a></p><p><a href="http://www.historynet.com/louisiana-purchase" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">States, accessed 9/2/2021</a></p><p><a href="http://www2.census.gov/library/publications/1975/compendia/hist_stats_colonial-1970/hist_stats_colonial-1970p1-chA.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">1810 population: Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970, p. 28 [3 MB]</a></p><p><a href="https://www.census.gov/library/stories/state-by-state/louisiana-population-change-between-census-decade.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Louisiana population estimate</a></p>