Yes, and also remember "Seward's Folly". I mean, why in the world would anyone want to spend the taxpayers' dollars purchasing that frozen wilderness? We'd have been better off pinching those pennies in our decrepit fingers and slouching off to die somewhere, and to heck with future generations, discoveries of which we knew not when we bought the Alaskan territory. There was nothing there but seals and Eskimos.
But, surprise surprise, there turned out to be something there that we really wanted after all, something I'm sure glad we have today. But, back then, nobody had ever heard of Prudhoe Bay...