48 Facts About Alaska

Alaska is by far the largest U S state by area, comprising more total area than the next three largest states combined.

Indigenous population of Alaska is proportionally the highest of any U S state, at over 15 percent.

Western and Southwestern Alaska are home to the Yup'ik, while their cousins the Alutiiq ~ Sugpiaq live in what is Southcentral Alaska.

Alaska was loosely governed by the military initially, and was administered as a district starting in 1884, with a governor appointed by the United States president.

Alaska was officially incorporated as an organized territory in 1912.

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Statehood for Alaska was an important cause of James Wickersham early in his tenure as a congressional delegate.

Statehood was approved by the U S Congress on July 7, 1958; Alaska was officially proclaimed a state on January 3, 1959.

On March 21, 2020, Ketchikan, a small, coastal town of approximately 8, 000 residents located in Southeast Alaska was determined to have a cluster of six COVID-19 cases.

Alaska is the only non-contiguous U S state on continental North America; about 500 miles of British Columbia (Canada) separates Alaska from Washington.

Alaska has a longer coastline than all the other U S states combined.

Alaska is more than twice the size of the second-largest U S state, and it is larger than the next three largest states (Texas, California, and Montana) combined.

Alaska is the seventh largest subnational division in the world, and if it was an independent nation would be the 16th largest country in the world, as it is larger than Iran.

Southwest Alaska is a sparsely inhabited region stretching some 500 miles inland from the Bering Sea.

Portions of the Alaska Peninsula are considered part of Southwest, with the remaining portions included with the Aleutian Islands.

Alaska is, by a large margin, the state with the smallest percentage of private land ownership when Native corporation holdings are excluded.

Alaska Heritage Resources Survey is a restricted inventory of all reported historic and prehistoric sites within the U S state of Alaska; it is maintained by the Office of History and Archaeology.

Alaska is not divided into counties, as most of the other U S states, but it is divided into boroughs.

The majority of these communities are located in the rural expanse of Alaska known as "The Bush" and are unconnected to the contiguous North American road network.

Climate in south and southeastern Alaska is a mid-latitude oceanic climate, and a subarctic oceanic climate (Koppen Cfc) in the northern parts.

Climate of western Alaska is determined in large part by the Bering Sea and the Gulf of Alaska.

Climate in the extreme north of Alaska is Arctic with long, very cold winters and short, cool summers.

In 2010, Alaska ranked as the 47th state by population, ahead of North Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming.

Alaska is the least densely populated state, and one of the most sparsely populated areas in the world, at 1.

Alaska is by far the largest U S state by area, and the tenth wealthiest.

In October 2014, the governor of Alaska signed a bill declaring the state's 20 indigenous languages to have official status.

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Alaska has been identified, along with Washington and Oregon in the Pacific Northwest, as being the least religious states in the United States, in terms of church membership.

Alaska has vast energy resources, although its oil reserves have been largely depleted.

Alaska offers some of the highest hydroelectric power potential in the country from its numerous rivers.

Alaska's economy depends heavily on increasingly expensive diesel fuel for heating, transportation, electric power and light.

The cost of a gallon of gas in urban Alaska today is usually thirty to sixty cents higher than the national average; prices in rural areas are generally significantly higher but vary widely depending on transportation costs, seasonal usage peaks, nearby petroleum development infrastructure and many other factors.

Alaska Permanent Fund is a constitutionally authorized appropriation of oil revenues, established by voters in 1976 to manage a surplus in state petroleum revenues from oil, largely in anticipation of the then recently constructed Trans-Alaska Pipeline System.

Alaska Constitution was written so as to discourage dedicating state funds for a particular purpose.

Cost of goods in Alaska has long been higher than in the contiguous 48 states.

Rural Alaska suffers from extremely high prices for food and consumer goods compared to the rest of the country, due to the relatively limited transportation infrastructure.

Alaska has an abundance of seafood, with the primary fisheries in the Bering Sea and the North Pacific.

Influences on music in Alaska include the traditional music of Alaska Natives as well as folk music brought by later immigrants from Russia and Europe.

Many films and television shows set in Alaska are not filmed there; for example, Northern Exposure, set in the fictional town of Cicely, Alaska, was filmed in Roslyn, Washington.

Many rural communities in Alaska are considered "dry", having outlawed the importation of alcoholic beverages.

Alaska has few road connections compared to the rest of the U S The state's road system, covering a relatively small area of the state, linking the central population centers and the Alaska Highway, the principal route out of the state through Canada.

The western part of Alaska has no road system connecting the communities with the rest of Alaska.

Railroad played a vital role in Alaska's development, moving freight into Alaska while transporting natural resources southward, such as coal from the Usibelli coal mine near Healy to Seward and gravel from the Matanuska Valley to Anchorage.

Alaska Railroad was one of the last railroads in North America to use cabooses in regular service and still uses them on some gravel trains.

Alaska's well-developed state-owned ferry system serves the cities of southeast, the Gulf Coast and the Alaska Peninsula.

Alaska Airlines is the only major airline offering in-state travel with jet service from Anchorage and Fairbanks to regional hubs like Bethel, Nome, Kotzebue, Dillingham, Kodiak, and other larger communities as well as to major Southeast and Alaska Peninsula communities.

In 2006, Alaska had the highest number of pilots per capita of any U S state.

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Alaska was formerly the only state in which possession of one ounce or less of marijuana in one's home was completely legal under state law, though the federal law remains in force.

In 2014, the Tax Foundation ranked Alaska as having the fourth most "business friendly" tax policy, behind only Wyoming, South Dakota, and Nevada.

Alaska was carried by Democratic nominee Lyndon B Johnson during his landslide election in 1964, while the 1960 and 1968 elections were close.