About the book: 1970 / On a high rocky coast in California, not far from San Francisco, a lonely old fortress, surrounded by a palisade, still stands. Inside are log buildings, dark from time and weather, and a small church. This is Fort Ross, the southernmost point of former Russian possessions in America. It was founded by order of the chief auditor of the Russian-American trading company, Nikolai Petrovich Rezanov, one hundred and sixty years ago. In the second half of the 18th century, in the North Pacific Ocean, Russian sailors - the discoverers of the Aleutian Islands and Alaska - continued to pave the way to the Unknown. In the last quarter of a century, permanent settlements of Russians arose along the entire northwestern coast of America. Siberian industrialists - Grigory Ivanovich Shelikhov and Alexander Andreevich Baranov - played a huge role in the development of new lands. Separated from their homeland by the Great Ocean, often dying of hunger and scurvy, brave Russian pioneers - sailors and hunters - wrote unforgettable pages in the history of geographical discoveries and left behind an eternal memory. “The most important thing,” writes the American journalist J. A. Garkison, “ it is the fact that one of the greatest events in American history—the exploration of the West—was started by a small detachment of courageous Russian people.” For middle and high school age.