who was president at the time of the louisiana?
<answer> Thomas Jefferson was president at the time of the Louisiana. <context> Updated March 03, 2017. On April 30, 1803 the nation of France sold 828,000 square miles (2,144,510 square km) of land west of the Mississippi River to the young United States of America in a treaty commonly known as the Louisiana Purchase. President Thomas Jefferson, in one of his greatest achievements, more than doubled the size of the United States at a time when the young nation's population growth was beginning to quicken. The Louisiana Purchase was an incredible deal for the United States, the final cost totaling less than five cents per acre at $15 million (about $283 million in today's dollars).