'The forgotten empire': When Russia colonised California

For nearly 30 years, part of Sonoma was ruled by Tsarist Russia, and it played a pivotal – if little-known – role in shaping the US.

It's a pretty, two-hour drive north from San Francisco to Крѣпость Россъ.

After slicing through the Golden Gate fog, I wound past sunburnt vineyards to Sonoma's remote coast and rolled down the windows. To my left, California plummeted into the Pacific and seals barked from boulders cropping out of the foamy surf. To my right, cliffs rose sharply and titanic redwoods shot up from the road's switchbacks.

Suddenly, a lonely twin-domed chapel topped with Orthodox crosses appeared against the blue ocean. I got out and followed a footpath past a Cyrillic sign towards a wooden, frontier-like stronghold built 150ft (46m) atop a bluff hanging over the sea.

"Welcome to Fort Ross (Крѣпость Россъ), the southern edge of the Russian Empire," said Chris Kimsey, an archaeologist with California State Parks.

Every year, millions of travellers set out on the Pacific Coast Highway to twist and turn their way along, one of the US's most stunning roads, as it hugs the entire California coastline. But chances are, few of these road-trippers realise that hidden here on a secluded headland 90 miles (145km) north of San Francisco lies a relic from the days when part of California was ruled by Tsarist Russia.

I didn't, and judging by Fort Ross's eerie emptiness, it seems I'm not alone.

"Even most Californians don't know Russia once had a colony in California," Kent Lightfoot, an anthropologist at the University of California, Berkeley, later told me. "They all know about the Spanish and the Mexicans, but almost no one knows anything about the Russians being here. It's kind of like the forgotten empire."

While some Americans may recall that the US's largest state, Alaska, was part of Russia for nearly 70 years, the Russian Empire's only permanent overseas colony, known as Russian America, also extended into California from 1812-1842. In fact, Russians settled in California decades before newly independent Americans did.

Innovative and surprisingly cosmopolitan, Fort Ross (short for Rossiya, meaning "Russia") was intended to be a breadbasket for Russia's struggling Alaskan settlements, but it also became the source of hotly debated plans for Russian expansion across North America.

The beginning of Russian America

As European powers expanded west in the 1500s and 1600s, Russia expanded east. By the 1640s, Russian fur traders and mercenaries had swept their way across Siberia to reach the Pacific coast.

This is the third in a four-part series highlighting the many ways the US was founded as it celebrates its 250th anniversary.

This rush led to permanent Russian settlements along Alaska's islands and coasts. In 1799, Tsar Paul I formalised the empire's Alaska claims by chartering the Russian-American Company. Modelled after the British East India Company, the for-profit venture didn't just control the fur trade; it now controlled all of Alaska as a corporate colony.

But there was a problem: while the company was growing rich on sea otter pelts, the colonists were growing hungry because they couldn't farm in much of Alaska's frozen landscape. So, the Russian settlers sailed south in search of warmer climates and Spanish trading partners.

In April 1806, with his colony stalked by starvation and his crew decimated by scurvy, Russian-American Company director Nikolai Rezanov steered the prow of his ship, the Juno, into San Francisco Bay. As the brig limped towards Spain's northernmost California settlement, a Spanish soldier grabbed a megaphone and demanded the strange vessel identify itself.

"Russia," a voice called back. It was a response the Spanish had been expecting for nearly 40 years.

Though Spain claimed all of California starting in 1542, it didn't actually occupy it until 1769, after getting word that Russian fur traders were rapidly moving east across the Alaskan islands. To prevent Russian and British advancement, Spain created a chain of presidios (military outposts) along the coast, starting with San Diego.

"The expansion of all of Alta [Upper] California, in many ways, was stimulated by the Russians," Lightfoot said. "The Spanish were nervous about the Russians coming south. So, the founding of San Diego, Santa Barbara, Monterey and San Francisco were a response to the Russians in Alaska."

During Rezanov's six-week stay in San Francisco,........

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