Every Land Deal America Ever Made, Ranked by Price per Acre

America has bought a lot of land. Some of it for less than two cents an acre, and some of it for almost three hundred dollars an acre. We took every major deal, divided the price by the acres, and ranked them from the most expensive to the cheapest. Along the way: a tie vote that killed a sale, a Frenchman who signed a treaty for Panama, a negotiator who had already been fired, a state funeral for a leg, and one deal that cost exactly nothing. Which one was the best deal? Tell us in the comments. 0:00 Two cents vs $292 0:42 #10 U.S. Virgin Islands 1:52 #9 Panama Canal Zone 2:55 #8 Gadsden Purchase 3:50 #7 Philippines, Puerto Rico and Guam 4:34 #6 Texas, part two 5:09 #5 Florida 5:48 #4 Mexican Cession 6:34 #3 Louisiana Purchase 7:22 #2 Alaska 8:19 #1 Texas, part one 8:55 Card declined: Cuba, Greenland, Guantanamo 9:43 The price not on the receipt 10:11 Which was the best deal? Prices are the amounts in each treaty divided by the acreage in the Bureau of Land Management's Public Land Statistics (Table 1-1) and US Census figures. Today's money uses MeasuringWorth and BLS CPI, so treat those as estimates. Native nations figure: Robert Lee, "Accounting for Conquest", Journal of American History (2017). Map data: Natural Earth, National Atlas of the United States (USGS), AWS Terrain Tiles, OpenStreetMap contributors. Icons: Microsoft Fluent Emoji (MIT). #history #ushistory #maps