The first Russians believed to have traveled through the Bering Strait were in the party of Fedot Alekseev and Semeon Dezhnev in 1648. Between 1633 and 1689, according to an accounting of Russian historian M.I. Belov, there were 177 attempts to transit the Bering Strait. Several assertions have been made that during this period, Russians touched on American soil.

If that were the case, the first Russian visit coincided with such things as the founding of Annapolis, Maryland, on the east coast of North America or the Treaty of Westphalia (ending the 30 Years War) in Europe.

What stymied Russian expansion in the Pacific was logistics. Until the 1860s, Russia had no ice-free port on the Pacific Ocean, and even its seasonal ports were thousands of miles from shipbuilding and supply hubs. It took literally years in the 18th century to transport the necessary ironmongery and other supplies from European Russia to Okhotsk, the principal port to build one ship for travel to Russian America.

And even if that ship were built, there was no guarantee of a safe voyage. Reliable shipbuilders were few, as were reliable crewmen and capable captains. The North Pacific is still an unforgiving body of water, and in the late 18th century, more Russian ships were wrecked trying to reach Russian America than actually made it.

These odds made trips to Russian America incredibly lucrative, of course. If a trader managed a round-trip voyage from Okhotsk to Alaska and back, he could carry furs worth hundreds of thousands of rubles.

Trading companies formed and dissolved with each voyage, risking fortunes and losing fortunes. The net effect of this system was that there was little backing for long-term presence. Short-term gain was the goal, and that generally meant little presence in North America. Only a handful of traders had anything more on their minds than immediate harvest of furs.

When the Russian American Company did receive its charter and imperial monopoly, it didn't receive much help from the Imperial government initially. That meant it operated on a shoestring budget, with few resources to keep existing operations going, let alone expanding southward. As the 19th century progressed, more resources became available, but even with those resources, Russia couldn't overcome the simple logistical difficulties involved in such vast distances.