Mount Saint Elias
On 16 July 1741, the crew of the Imperial Russian Navy ship "" ("Святой Пётр"), captained by Vitus Bering, sighted Mount Saint Elias, the fourth-highest summit in North America. While dispatched on the Russian Great Northern Expedition, they became the first Europeans to land in northwestern North America. The Russian fur trade soon followed the discovery. By 1812, the Russian Empire claimed Alaska and the Pacific Coast of North America as far south as the Russian settlement of Fortress Ross, only northwest of the Spain's Presidio Real de San Francisco.