LOUISIANA PURCHASE

an area of US land bought from France in 1803 for $15 million, or less than 3 cents an acre. The area was about 828 000 square miles (more than 2 million square kilometres), and extended from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains and from the Gulf of Mexico to Canada . It made the US more than twice as large as it had been, and encouraged Americans to move west. The French named the area after King Louis XIV.