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.
The state is so large that it increased the area of the United States by a fifth. Alaska is more than twice the size of Texas, long its predecessor as the largest state. About a third of the vast area is forested, and glaciers cover more than 28,800 square miles (74,590 square kilometers). The Malaspina glacier complex is larger than the state of Rhode Island.
The name Alaska comes from the Aleut word alaxsxaq, meaning "object toward which the action of the sea is directed"--that is, the mainland. Its nicknames are the Land of the Midnight Sun and America's Last Frontier. It was once labeled "Seward's folly" and "Seward's icebox" in ridicule of the secretary of state who negotiated the purchase of what was considered a liability.
