The last American frontier, Alaska is the largest of the states in size and the second smallest in population. Nearly everything about this 49th state is big. Its Mount McKinley is higher than any other peak in North America. Its Yukon River is one of the longest navigable waterways in the world. Huge animals still thrive in its open spaces--Kodiak, grizzly, black, and polar bears; moose, caribou, musk-oxen, wolves; otter, walrus, seals, humpback and killer whales.
Alaska is a land of spectacular contrasts--smoking volcanoes and frozen tundra, hot springs and ice floes, creeping glaciers and virgin forests. This vast, raw, and rugged land thrusts a chain of volcanic islands more than a thousand miles southwest into the Bering Sea. Reaching beyond the international date line, the land area originally spanned four time zones. It juts northward far into the Arctic Circle, and to the south its Panhandle extends for miles between the Pacific Ocean and the Canadian Rockies.
The Stars and Stripes have flown over Alaska since March 30, 1867, when the vast land was purchased from Russia for 7.2 million dollars. In 1959 Alaska became the first new state since New Mexico and Arizona had achieved statehood in 1912, which was also the year Alaska was incorporated as a territory--the first step toward statehood.
Alaska occupies a huge peninsula, from which hang two long extensions. To the southwest stretch the Alaska Peninsula and the Aleutian Islands chain. To the southeast is a 500-mile- (805-kilometer-) long strip bordering on British Columbia. On its eastern side the Alaskan mainland is adjacent to Canada's Yukon Territory. Alaska's total area is 591,004 square miles (1,530,693 square kilometers), including 20,171 square miles (52,243 square kilometers) of lakes and rivers. With its islands, Alaska has 33,904 miles (54,562 kilometers) of shoreline.
Northward, Alaska extends the United States to Point Barrow on the Arctic Ocean. About one third of Alaska is within the Arctic Circle. Westward, the Aleutian Islands chain stretches across the Pacific Ocean into the Eastern Hemisphere. Attu, Alaska's westernmost island, is located at 173o E longitude. This is directly north of New Zealand. The distance from Attu, in the Aleutians, to Ketchikan, in the Panhandle, is greater than the distance from San Francisco, Calif., to New York City.
