Alaska

Dictionary: A·las·ka (ə-lăs'kə)

(Abbr. AK or Alas.)

A state of the United States in extreme northwest North America including the Aleutian Islands and Alexander Archipelago. It is separated from the other mainland states by British Columbia, Canada. Alaska was admitted as the 49th state in 1959 and is the largest state of the Union. The territory was purchased from Russia in 1867 for $7,200,000 and was known as Seward's Folly (after Secretary of State William H. Seward, who negotiated the purchase) until gold was discovered in the late 1800s. Juneau is the capital and Anchorage the largest city. Population: 683,000.

Alaskan A·las'kan adj. & n.

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Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Alaska

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State (pop., 2008 est.: 686,293) of the U.S., lying at the northwest extremity of North America. It is the largest in area of the U.S. states, covering 589,194 sq mi (1,526,005 sq km). Bordered by Canada to the east and southeast and facing Siberia across the Bering Strait and Bering Sea to the west, it has the highest point on the continent, Mount McKinley. Its capital is Juneau. The original inhabitants are thought to have migrated over the Bering Land Bridge as well as from the Arctic as early as 10,000 BCE. The first European settlement was established in 1784 by Russian fur traders on Kodiak Island. Hudson's Bay Co. traders were also interested in the same area, and Russian-Canadian trade rivalry lasted well into the 19th century. In 1867 William Seward negotiated Alaska's sale from the Russians to the U.S., and the subsequent discovery of gold stimulated American settlement. Alaska was a U.S. territory from 1912 until it was admitted as the 49th state in 1959. Its economy has become increasingly centred on services (research and tourism), but since the opening of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline in 1977, Alaska has accounted for about one-fifth of all the oil produced in the United States. Since the mid-20th century, the question of development versus preservation has been heightened by the often competing agendas of commercial interests and environmentalists. Moreover, global warming has greatly affected Alaska's climate, causing permafrost to thaw and sea ice to melt.

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US History Encyclopedia: Alaska

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For most of its history as a U.S. possession, Alaska was known as the "last frontier," the last part of the country where would-be pioneers could go to live out the American dream of freedom and self-sufficiency through hard work and ingenuity. But with the rise of environmental consciousness in the 1960s and 1970s, that notion subsided. Alaska became America's "last wilderness," the last place in America with vast stretches of undeveloped, unpopulated land. In 1980 Congress designated 50 million acres of the state as wilderness, doubling the size of the national wilderness system.

Few Americans knew much about the region when the United States purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867. Newspaper cartoons ridiculed the purchase as "Seward's Folly," "Icebergia," and "Walrussia." But informed Americans emphasized Alaska's resource potential in furbearers and minerals, and the U.S. Senate approved Secretary of State William H. Seward's purchase treaty in the summer of 1867 by a vote of 37–2.

At that time about thirty thousand indigenous people lived in the region, pursuing traditional subsistence. These people included the Inuit (northern Eskimos) who are culturally related to all Arctic indigenes; Yupik speakers (southern Eskimos) of the Yukon River and Kuskokwim River delta area; Aleut People living in the Aleutian Islands who are related to Alutiq-speaking people on the south shore of the Alaska Peninsula and on Kodiak Island; Dene-speaking Athabaskan Indians who live along the interior rivers; and the Dene-speaking Tlingit and Haida people (Pacific Northwest Coast Indians) of the Southeast Alaska Panhandle (Alexander Archipelago) who are related culturally to the coastal Indians of British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon.

Russian Interest

The Russians were the first outsiders to establish sustained contact with Alaska Native peoples, initially in the Aleutian Islands and later in the southeastern coastal islands. In 1725 Peter the Great commissioned an expedition to search east of Siberia for lands with economic resources useful to the Russian state. The expedition commander Vitus Bering failed to find America on his first attempt in 1728, but returning in 1741 he made a landfall on the Alaskan coast near Cape Suckling. Bering shipwrecked on a North Pacific island on his return voyage and died there on 8 December.

Bering's voyages did not provide a comprehensive picture of the geography of Northwest North America. That would await the third round-the-world voyage of Captain James Cook in 1778. But more than half of Bering's crew survived the shipwreck and returned to Kamchatka bringing pelts of various furbearers, including sea otter. Siberian fur trappers recognized the sea otter as the most valuable pelt in the world at the time, setting off a rush to the Aleutian Islands. Over the next half century, Russian trappers made one hundred individual voyages to the American islands to hunt sea otters, fur seals, and walrus, drawing Alaska's indigenous population into the world mercantilist economy.

American furs and walrus ivory were profitable for private investors who financed the voyages and for the Russian tsarist government, which took 10 percent of each voyage's profit. But the exploitation was costly to Alaska Natives. The Russians relied on Aleut Natives to hunt furbearers and held women and children hostage in the villages while Russian overseers traveled with the hunters. The entire Aleut population was brutalized and decimated by this practice, and new diseases the Russians introduced reduced the Aleut population from twenty thousand to two thousand by 1800.

Ranging relentlessly eastward, Russian trappers in 1759 discovered the Alaska Peninsula and Kodiak Island. In 1784 Grigory Shelekhov established the first permanent Russian post in North America on Kodiak Island. Returning to Russia, Shelekhov attempted to persuade Empress Catherine II to invest in the exploitation of North America, but concerned about Spanish and English interest in the region, she declined.

In 1799, however, Paul III chartered a government sponsored private monopoly, the Russian American Company. Over the next sixty years the company systematically exploited Alaska's resources, primarily furs, returning handsome profits to the stockholders and the government. During the company's first twenty-year charter, Aleksandr Baranov extended Russian activities into the Alexander Archipelago, and in 1824 and 1825 the United States and Britain signed treaties formalizing Russia's occupation there but claiming the area to the south, the Oregon Country, as their own. The 1825 treaty established permanent boundaries for Alaska. In 1812 Baranov also established a Russian agricultural post on the California coast, eighty miles north of San Francisco, but failed in an attempt to establish a similar post in Hawaii in 1815.

Russia did not attempt to establish a new society in North America. The largest number of Russians ever in the colony at one time was 823. They sought only the efficient exploitation of the easily accessible resources. Yet despite the participation of the Russian navy, the company and the government could not keep the enterprise adequately supplied. By midcentury the colony depended on the fiercely independent Tlingit Indians for food. When the Crimean War (1854–1856) demonstrated that Russian America could not be defended, critics began to advocate relinquishing the colony, the profitability of which was becoming a problem.

American Interest

Sale to the United States was the only alternative, as England was Russia's principal European antagonist. In the aftermath of the American Civil War, negotiations proceeded quickly. The United States purchased the colony for $7.2 million. The formal transfer was conducted at Sitka on 18 October 1867, which became a state holiday in Alaska.

Secretary Seward wanted Alaska primarily as a gateway to new markets in Asia for American agricultural and manufactured products. Others recognized Alaska's resource potential. But until those resources were actually discovered and developed, Americans showed little interest in the region. The 1880 census revealed 30,000 Natives and a mere 435 non-Natives. Congress waited to implement legislation organizing the territory until it was warranted by the immigration of more pioneer settlers.

These settlers arrived quickly after 1880, when gold was discovered and investors began development of the Treadwell Mines at Juneau to exploit large lode deposits. By 1884 Treadwell boasted the largest gold stamp mill in North America, prompting Congress to pass the first organic legislation for the region that authorized the appointment of a governor, a judge, and other civil officials. Sitka was named the capital. The act provided for acculturation of Alaska Natives at the direction of a "general agent of education" who was to establish schools in Native villages and in the few white towns.

At the same time the U.S. Army began a systematic reconnaissance of Alaska's interior, which was largely unmapped. Explorations by Henry Allen, William Abercrombie, John Cantwell, George Stoney, J. C. Castner, Edwin Fitch Glenn, and others produced a comprehensive understanding of Alaska's geography and physiography by the end of the century.

By 1890 the census counted over five thousand non-Natives, most in Juneau, Sitka, and Wrangell in the southeastern panhandle. A few hundred non-Native prospector-traders worked along the interior rivers, trapping and trading furs among the Athabaskan Indians. Two hundred ships annually worked the lucrative Bering Sea and Arctic whale fishery and traded with the coastal Inuit.

Prospectors discovered gold on the Forty mile River near the Canadian border in 1886 and on Birch Creek near Fort Yukon in 1891, generating increasing interest in Alaska's mineral prospects. In 1896 George Carmacks and his Indian companions discovered placer deposits of unprecedented extent on tributaries of the Klondike River in the Yukon Territory, setting off the gold rush of 1897–1898. Forty thousand argonauts crossed the mountain passes from the tidewater to the upper Yukon River en route to the gold fields. The rush was short-lived but intense. Four thousand people found gold, but only four hundred found it in quantities that might be considered a "fortune."

Many gold trekkers continued into Alaska and searched virtually every river system for minerals. Gold was found in the creeks of the Seward Peninsula in the fall of 1898, sparking a major rush there and the founding of Nome. Another find in the Tanana River drainage in 1902 led to the founding of Fairbanks. Other discoveries generated minor rushes in a score of places, but most played out quickly. New settlers established a large number of small communities, however, and the 1900 census showed thirty thousand non-Natives in the territory, a figure that stayed virtually the same until 1940.

Although Alaskan gold production peaked in 1906, the federal government adopted substantial legislation in response to the gold rush to nurture economic development and to sustain new settlement, including construction of a telegraph line that connected the territory to Seattle, a system of license fees to generate territorial government revenue, civil and criminal legal codes, and a federally owned and operated railroad, the last a unique feature of government support of western settlement. In 1906 Congress authorized the biennial election of a nonvoting territorial delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives and in 1914 a bicameral territorial legislature. At the same time Progressive Era conservation consciousness led to a number of federal conservation withdrawals, including the Tongass National Forest in 1905, the Chugach National Forest in 1907, Mount McKinley National Park in 1917, Katmai National Park in 1918, and Glacier Bay National Park in 1925.

The gold rush and government support also attracted corporate investors interested in developing Alaska's natural resources. By 1890 thirty-seven Pacific salmon canneries operated in Alaska, and by the end of the century more than twice that number operated. The invention of the fish trap, a system of surface to seafloor netting that led fish to a central enclosure, made fishing extremely efficient and produced high profits. By the 1920s moderate taxation of the salmon industry supplied three-fourths of territorial revenue.

The Guggenheim mining family also became interested in Alaska and early in the twentieth century developed a plan to coordinate development of gold, copper, coal, and oil deposits. Drawing the financier J. P. Morgan into a partnership, they created the Alaska Syndicate, which owned the Alaska Steamship Company; built, owned, and operated the Copper River and Northwestern Railway from Cordova at the tidewater to the Wrangell Mountains; owned the Kennecott Copper Mines; and developed oil deposits at Katalla. Their plans to develop coal deposits near Katalla were stopped when President Theodore Roosevelt closed access to Alaska coal lands in 1906 as a strategic measure. Deprived of the cheap, local source of coal, the syndicate scrapped plans to build their railroad to the Yukon River to link it to the internal river system. Having extracted $300 million worth of copper by 1939, the syndicate attempted to sell the railway to the federal government, but when negotiations collapsed, the partners dismantled the road and transferred the rails and rolling stock to operations in Arizona and Utah.

Aviation had a significant impact on Alaska and from the formation of the first companies in the mid-1920s developed rapidly. Perhaps more than in any other part of the country, the airplane in roadless Alaska permitted access to otherwise inaccessible areas, provided hope in times of medical emergency, and greatly speeded mail delivery. Bush pilots quickly became genuine heroes wherever in the territory they flew.

Federal aid helped Alaska weather the Great Depression. Public Works Administration (PWA) and the Civil Works Administration (CWA) loans for heavy public construction projects provided jobs, as did Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camps in every section of the territory. Also Native leaders worked with the federal government to extend the Indian Reorganization Act to Alaska in 1936 and to authorize a broad land claims suit by the Tlingit and Haida Indians in 1935. In an unusual rural rehabilitation project, two hundred families from the upper Midwest were transported to the Matanuska Valley near Anchorage in 1935 to start farms. But the experiment failed, for construction jobs created by the remilitarization of Alaska beginning in 1940 promised faster economic advance for the new settlers.

World War II transformed Alaska economically as the government invested $3 billion in three hundred new military installations in the territory. The military personnel in the territory numbered 300,000, five times the 1940 population. Attempting to divert American Pacific forces away from Midway Island in June 1942, Japanese forces captured two Aleutian Islands. In a dramatic battle on American soil in May 1943, a combined American and Canadian force of fourteen thousand retook Attu Island, suffering five hundred killed and nine hundred wounded. The Japanese abandoned Kiska before the American invasion there.

Alaska gained population quickly during World War II. Afterward Cold War strategic defenses in the territory included airfields for long-range bombers and the Distant Early Warning radar net across the Arctic. The Atomic Energy Commission used Amchitka Island in the Aleutians for large-scale nuclear tests and contemplated using nuclear explosions to create a new harbor on Alaska's Arctic coast. Federal spending became the basis of the regional economy that supported a still-expanding population.

Statehood

Shortly after the war territorial leaders began a campaign to achieve statehood for Alaska. They were opposed by the canned salmon industry, which feared additional regulation and taxation. In addition the U.S. military was unenthusiastic because of the increased bureaucracy. But territorial leaders conducted an aggressive, national campaign based on the moral right of all American citizens to have all the rights of other citizens, and following a convention in 1955–1956, they presented Congress with a progressive, uncomplicated state constitution. When polls showed Americans overwhelmingly in support of

Alaskan statehood in 1958, Congress passed the enabling act. Statehood became official on 3 January 1959.

The statehood act entitled the new state to select 104 million acres of unoccupied, unreserved land from Alaska's 375 million acres. Federal reserves already claimed 54 million acres. But the act also prohibited the state from selecting any land that might be subject to Native title. The United States had never executed any Native treaties in Alaska, and the question of Native land title had not been settled. When the state began to select its land, Native groups protested the selections. By 1965, despite Native protests, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) had transferred 12 million acres to the state, including, fortuitously as it developed, land at Prudhoe Bay on the North (Arctic) Slope. By then, however, Native claims blanketed the entire state. Secretary of the Interior Steward Udall halted all further transfers to the state until Native land claims could be sorted out.

That process had just begun when, in December 1967, Richfield Oil Company discovered North America's largest oil field at Prudhoe Bay. A 789–mile hot oil pipeline would be necessary to transport the oil from the Arctic Coast to Prince William Sound, crossing many miles of land that eventually was titled to Natives. Natives worked with state and industry leaders and the U.S. Congress to craft the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) Of 1971. By that act Natives obtained title to 44 million acres of traditionally utilized land, and the United States paid $962.5 million in compensation for extinguishments of Native title to Alaska's remaining 331 million acres. In an unprecedented provision, the money was used to capitalize profit-making Native regional and village economic development corporations. All Alaska Natives became stockholders in one or another of the corporations. Natives would thereby earn stock dividends from their corporations in perpetuity.

The act transformed the status of Alaska Natives, making their corporations an immediate major economic factor in Alaska. Despite early difficulties, most corporations were able to pay stock dividends by the 1990s. Natives adapted well to the roles of corporation leaders and stockholders, though lack of economic sustainability threatened the future of many of the remote villages. Of 100,000 Alaska Natives in a state population of 620,000 in 2000, 30,000 were permanent urban residents.

ANCSA did not guarantee construction of the Alaska pipeline, however, because national environmental groups sued to halt the project to preserve Alaska wilderness. When OPEC placed an embargo on oil exports to the United States following the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, Congress passed the Alaska Pipeline Authorization Act, and construction began.

The state established a comprehensive tax structure for oil production, and by the 1980s oil taxes produced 85 percent of public state revenue. By the 1990s most public sector material infrastructure in the state had been paid for by oil taxation. So dependent was the state on oil money that a contraction of the price per barrel from $40 in 1981 to $15 in 1986 eliminated thousands of jobs and led to the outmigration of 600,000 residents from the state in 1985 and 1986.

In 1976 Alaska voters approved the creation of a publicly owned state investment fund, the Alaska Permanent Fund, made up of 10 percent of all state oil revenue. In 1982 the state legislature mandated that about half of the earnings on the fund be paid per capita annually to all state residents. In 2000 the dividend payment was near $2,000 for each Alaska citizen.

Reflecting the raised environmental consciousness in the United States, ANCSA also included a provision for Congress to establish new federal conservation units in Alaska within eight years. Fearing the loss of opportunities for economic development, state leaders and residents opposed the provision, but Congress proceeded. The battle over the Alaska lands act was bitter and protracted, but in 1980 Congress passed the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA), which reserved 104 additional Alaska acres in new conservation units, half of which were designated wilderness. Natives were guaranteed access to traditional subsistence resources across the new conservation areas. Mount McKinley Park was renamed Denali National Park.

Americans' new embrace of wilderness values generated both horror and anger when the fully loaded oil tanker Exxon Valdez went aground on Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound in March 1989, spilling 10.8 million gallons of oil in an area considered pristine wilderness. Thousands of seabirds and uncounted fish died, along with lesser numbers of seals, sea otters, and other bird and animal species, including killer whales. Native villagers in the sound feared the contamination of subsistence resources. Exxon Corporation spent three summers cleaning up the spill at a cost of $2 billion, and the corporation was fined $1 billion by the state and federal governments.

Alaska mirrors a long-standing debate in the United States over the proper balance between natural resource extraction and resource preservation. The coastal plain of Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) is presumed to contain significant oil deposits, which most Alaskans wish to see developed. But the area is considered wilderness by most Americans. The future of the refuge rests with Congress, where at the twentieth century's end vigorous debate continued.

Bibliography

Gibson, James R. Otter Skins, Boston Ships, and China Goods: The Maritime Fur Trade of the Northwest Coast, 1785–1841. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1992.

Haycox, Stephen. Alaska—An American Colony. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002.

———. Frigid Embrace: Politics, Economics and Environment in Alaska. Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 2002.

———, and Mary Mangusso, eds. An Alaska Anthology: Interpreting the Past. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1996.

Kollin, Susan. Nature's State: Imagining Alaska as the Last Frontier. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001.

Mitchell, Donald Craig. Sold American: The Story of Alaska Natives and Their Land, 1867–1959. Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1997; Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press, 2000.

Sherwood, Morgan. Exploration of Alaska, 1865–1900. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1965; Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press, 1992.

—Stephen Haycox

Russian History Encyclopedia: Alaska

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Alaska is the largest state in the United States, equal to one-fifth of the country's continental land mass. Situated in the extreme northwestern region of North America, it is separated from Russian Asia by the Bering Strait (51 miles; 82 kilometers). Commonly nicknamed "The Last Frontier" or "Land of the Midnight Sun," the state's official name derives from an Aleut word meaning "great land" or "that which the sea breaks against." Alaska is replete with high-walled fjords and majestic mountains, with slow-moving glaciers and still-active volcanoes. The state is also home to Eskimos and the Aleut and Athabaskan Indians, as well as about fourteen thousand Tlingit, Tshimshian, and Haida people - comprising about 16 percent of the Alaskan population. (The term Eskimo is used for Alaskan natives, while Inuit is used for Eskimos living in Canada.) Inupiat and Yupik are the two main Eskimo groups. While the Inupiat speak Inupiaq and reside in the north and northwest parts of Alaska, the Yupik speak Yupik and live in the south and southwest. Juneau is the state's capital, but Anchorage is the largest city.

The first Russians to come to the Alaskan mainland and the Aleutian Islands were Alexei Chirikov (a Russian naval captain) and Vitus Bering (a Dane working for the Russians), who arrived in 1741. Tsar Peter the Great (1672 - 1725) encouraged the explorers, eager to gain the fur trade of Alaska and the markets of China. Hence, for half a century thereafter, intrepid frontiersmen and fur traders (promyshlenniki) ranged from the Kurile Islands to southeastern Alaska, often exploiting native seafaring skills to mine the rich supply of sea otter and seal pelts for the lucrative China trade. In 1784, one of these brave adventurers, Grigory Shelekhov (1747 - 1795), established the first colony in Alaska, encouraged by Tsarina Catherine II (the Great) (1729 - 1796).

Missionaries soon followed the traders, beginning in 1794, aiming to convert souls to Christianity. The beneficial role of the Russian missions in Alaska is only beginning to be fully appreciated. Undoubtedly, some Russian imperialists used the missionary enterprise as an instrument in their own endeavors. However, as recently discovered documents in the U.S. Library of Congress show, the selfless work of some Russian Orthodox priests, such as Metropolitan Innokenty Veniaminov (1797 - 1879), not only promoted harmonious relations between Russians and Alaskans, but preserved the culture and languages of the Native Alaskans.

Diplomatic relations between Russia and the United States, which began in 1808, were relatively cordial in the early 1800s. They were unhampered by the Monroe Doctrine, which warned that the American continent was no territory for future European colonization. Tsar Alexander I admired the American republic, and agreed in April 1824 to restrict Russia's claims on the America continent to Alaska. American statesmen had attempted several times between 1834 and 1867 to purchase Alaska from Russia. On March 23, 1867, the expansionist-minded Secretary of State William H. Seward met with Russian minister to Washington Baron Edouard de Stoeckl and agreed on a price of $7,200,000. This translated into about 2.5 cents per acre for 586,400 square miles of territory, twice the size of Texas. Overextended geographically, the Russians were happy at the time to release the burden. However, the discovery of gold in 1896 and of the largest oil field in North America (near Prudhoe Bay) in 1968 may have caused second thoughts.

Bibliography

Bolkhovitinov, N. N., and Pierce, Richard A. (1996). Russian-American Relations and the Sale of Alaska, 1834 - 1867. Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press.

Hoxie, Frederick E., and Mancall, Peter C. (2001). American Nations: Encounters in Indian Country, 1850 to the Present. New York: Routledge.

Thomas, David Hurst. (200). Exploring Native North America. New York: Oxford University Press.

—JOHANNA GRANVILLE

Columbia Encyclopedia: Alaska

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Alaska (əlă'skə), largest in area of the United States but third smallest (exceeding only Vermont and Wyoming) in population, occupying the northwest extremity of the North American continent, separated from the coterminous United States by W Canada. It is bordered by Yukon and British Columbia (E), the Gulf of Alaska and the Pacific Ocean (S), the Bering Sea, Bering Strait, and Chukchi Sea (W), and the Beaufort Sea and the Arctic Ocean (N).

Facts and Figures

Area, 656,424 sq mi (1,700,135 sq km), including 86,051 sq mi (222,871 sq km) of water surface. Pop. (2000) 628,932, a 14% increase since the 1990 census. Capital, Juneau. Largest city, Anchorage. Statehood, Jan. 3, 1959 (49th state). Highest pt., Mt. McKinley, 20,320 ft (6,198 m); lowest pt., sea level. Motto, North to the Future. State bird, willow ptarmigan. State flower, forget-me-not. State tree, Sitka spruce. Abbr., AK

Land and People

Nearly one fifth the size of the rest of the United States, Alaska is, at the tip of the Seward Peninsula in the northwest, only a few miles from the Russian Far East; the two are separated by the narrow Bering Strait. The Seward Peninsula, chiefly tundra covered, is sparsely inhabited. The Bering Strait widens in the north to the Chukchi Sea, which slices into Alaska with Kotzebue Sound; in the south the strait widens to the Bering Sea, which cuts into Alaska with Norton Sound and Bristol Bay.

Toward the south the state again extends toward Russia in the Alaska Peninsula and the Aleutian Islands, reaching a total of 1,200 mi (1,931 km) toward the Komandorski Islands; together they divide the Bering Sea from the Pacific. The Aleutian Range, which is the spine of the Alaska Peninsula, is continued in the grass-covered, treeless Aleutian Islands; the climate there is unremittingly harsh-foggy, damp, and cold in the winter and subject to violent winds (williwaws). Once traversed by Russian fur traders hunting sea otters, the Aleutians are now chiefly of strategic importance. They contain several active volcanoes.

The southern coast of Alaska is deeply indented by two inlets of the wide Gulf of Alaska, Cook Inlet and Prince William Sound; the Kenai Peninsula between them extends southwest toward Kodiak Island. The narrow Panhandle dips southeast along the coast from the Gulf of Alaska, cutting into British Columbia. It consists of the offshore islands of the Alexander Archipelago and the narrow coast, which rises steeply to the peaks of the Coast Range and the Saint Elias Mts. Winters in the Panhandle are relatively mild, with heavy rainfall and, except on the upper slopes of the mountains, comparatively little snow.

The interior of Alaska, on the other hand, has very cold winters and short, hot summers. In Arctic Alaska, north of the Brooks Range, the temperature in winter reaches −10°F to −40°F (−23.3°C to −40°C). The land there is mostly barren, cut by many short rivers and one long one, the Colville. Alaska's major river is the Yukon, which crosses the state from east to west for 1,200 mi (1,931 km), from the Canadian border to the Bering Sea. The northernmost reach of Alaska is Point Barrow.

Alaska's climate and terrain (rough coast and high mountain ranges) divide it into relatively isolated regions, and transportation relies heavily on costly airlines. The Panhandle is the most populous region; Juneau, the state's capital and third largest city, is there. The Panhandle's connection with Seattle is by ships, which ply the Inside Passage between the coast and the offshore islands. In S central Alaska, Anchorage, the state's largest city, is the center for the Alaskan RR and for airways; it is also connected with the Alaska Highway. On the Seward Peninsula and Norton Sound, Nome, founded when gold was discovered (1898) in the sands of local beaches, is now a small, isolated settlement. Southern ports including Seward, Anchorage, and Valdez are linked by highway with Fairbanks, the state's second largest (and largest interior) city. Cordova and Kodiak depend upon the ocean lanes. On the North Slope, the entire Arctic coast is icebound most of the year, and the ground remains permanently frozen.

The state abounds in natural wonders. In the Panhandle, the scenic beauty of the mountains and the rugged fjord-indented coast are augmented by such attractions as the Malaspina glacier and the acres of blue ice in Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve. In the Alaska Range of S central Alaska stands the highest point in North America, Mt. McKinley (Denali) in Denali National Park and Preserve. The Alaska Peninsula and the Aleutian Islands have numerous volcanoes; Katmai National Park and Preserve contains the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes, scene of a volcanic eruption in 1912.

In the mid-1990s slightly over three quarters of the state's population was white and some 15% was Native American (largely Eskimo and Aleut).

Economy

Alaska has very little agriculture, ranking last in the nation in number of farms and value of farm products. The state's best arable land is in its S central region, in the Matanuska Valley N of Anchorage and the Tanana Valley (around Fairbanks). The state's most valuable farm commodities are greenhouse and dairy products and potatoes.

Alaska leads the nation in the value of its commercial fishing catch-chiefly salmon, crab, shrimp, halibut, herring, and cod. Anchorage and Dutch Harbor are major fishing ports, and the freezing and canning of fish dominates the food-processing industry, the state's largest manufacturing enterprise. Lumbering and related industries are of great importance, although disputes over logging in the state's great national forests are ongoing. Mining, principally of petroleum and natural gas, is the state's most valuable industry. Gold, which led to settlement at the end of the 19th cent., is no longer mined in quantity. Fur-trapping, Alaska's oldest industry, endures; pelts are obtained from a great variety of animals. The Pribilof Islands are especially noted as a source of sealskins (the seals there are owned by the U.S. government, and their use is carefully regulated).

In 1968 vast reserves of oil and natural gas were discovered on the Alaska North Slope near Prudhoe Bay. The petroleum reservoir was determined to be twice the size of any other field in North America. The 800-mi (1,287-km) Trans-Alaska pipeline from the North Slope to the ice-free port of Valdez opened in 1977, after bitter opposition from environmentalists, and oil began to dominate the state economy. The Alaska Permanent Fund, created in 1977, receives 25% of Alaska's oil royalty income. The fund is designed to provide the state with income after the oil reserves are depleted and has paid dividends to all residents.

Government-federal, state, and local-is Alaska's major source of employment. The state's strategic location has generated considerable defense activity since World War II, including the establishment of highways, airfields, and permanent military bases. Alaska's tourism increased dramatically with the help of improvements in transportation; it now follows only oil among the state's industries. The Inside Passage, Denali National Park, and the 1000-mi (1,600 km) Iditarod sled-dog race are major attractions.

Government, Politics, and Higher Education

Alaska operates under a constitution drawn up and ratified in 1956 (effective with statehood). Its executive branch is headed by a governor and a secretary of state, both elected (on the same ticket) for four-year terms. Alaska's bicameral legislature has a senate with 20 members and a house of representatives with 40 members. The state sends two senators and one representative to the U.S. Congress and has three electoral votes.

Democrats at first dominated state politics, but Republicans have gained gradual ascendance since 1966. A Democrat, Tony Knowles, was elected governor in 1994 and reelected in 1998. The GOP recaptured the governorship in 2002 when Frank Murkowski was elected to the office. In 2006 Republican Sarah Palin was elected governor, defeating Murkowski in the primary and Knowles in the general election. She was the first woman to win the governorship. She resigned in 2009 and was succeeded by Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell, also a Republican.

Alaska's educational institutions include the Univ. of Alaska, with divisions at Fairbanks, Anchorage, and Juneau; and Alaska Pacific Univ., at Anchorage.

History

Russian Colonization

The disastrous voyage of Vitus Bering and Aleksey Chirikov in 1741 began the march of Russian traders across Siberia. The survivors who returned with sea otter skins started a rush of fur hunters to the Aleutian Islands. Grigori Shelekhov in 1784 founded the first permanent settlement in Alaska on Kodiak Island and sent (1790) to Alaska the man who was to dominate the period of Russian influence there, Aleksandr Baranov. A monopoly was granted to the Russian American Company in 1799, and it was Baranov who directed its Alaskan activities. Baranov extended the Russian trade far down the west coast of North America and even, after several unsuccessful attempts, founded (1812) a settlement in N California.

Rivalry for the northwest coast was strong, and British and American trading vessels began to threaten the Russian monopoly. In 1821 the czar issued a ukase (imperial command) claiming the 51st parallel as the southern boundary of Alaska and warning foreign vessels not to trespass beyond it. British and American protests, the promulgation of the Monroe Doctrine, and Russian embroilment elsewhere resulted (1824) in a negotiated settlement of the boundary at lat. 54°40′N (the present southern boundary of Alaska). Russian interests in Alaska gradually declined, and after the Crimean War, Russia sought to dispose of the territory altogether.

Early Years as a U.S. Possession

In 1867, Russia sold Alaska to the United States for $7,200,000. The U.S. purchase was accomplished solely through the determined efforts of Secretary of State William H. Seward, and for many years afterward the land was derisively called Seward's Folly or Seward's Icebox because of its supposed uselessness. Since Alaska appeared to offer no immediate financial return, it was neglected. The U.S. army officially controlled the area until 1876, when scandals caused the withdrawal of the troops. After a brief period, during which government was in the hands of customs officials, the U.S. navy was given charge (1879). Most of the territory was not even known, although the British (notably John Franklin and Capt. F. W. Beechey) had explored the coast of the Arctic Ocean, and the Hudson's Bay Company had explored the Yukon.

It was not until after the discovery of gold in the Juneau region in 1880 that Alaska was given a governor and a feeble local administration (under the Organic Act of 1884). Missionaries, who had come to the region in the late 1870s, exercised considerable influence. Most influential was Sheldon Jackson, best known for his introduction of reindeer to help the Alaska Eskimo (Inuit), impoverished by the wanton destruction of the fur seals. Sealing was the subject of a long international controversy (see Bering Sea Fur-Seal Controversy under Bering Sea), which was not ended until after gold had permanently transformed Alaska.

The Gold Rush

Paradoxically, the first gold finds that tremendously influenced Alaska were in Canada. The Klondike strike of 1896 brought a stampede, mainly of Americans, and most of them came through Alaska. The big discoveries in Alaska itself followed-Nome in 1898-99, Fairbanks in 1902. The miners and prospectors (the sourdoughs) took over Alaska, and the era of the mining camps reached its height; a criminal code was belatedly applied in 1899.

The longstanding controversy concerning the boundary between the Alaska Panhandle and British Columbia was aggravated by the large number of miners traveling the Inside Passage to the gold fields. The matter was finally settled in 1903 by a six-man tribunal, composed of American, Canadian, and British representatives. The decision was generally favorable to the United States, and a period of rapid building and development began. Mining, requiring heavy financing, passed into the hands of Eastern capitalists, notably the monopolistic Alaska Syndicate. Opposition to these "interests" became the burning issue in Alaska and was catapulted into national politics; Gifford Pinchot and R. A. Ballinger were the chief antagonists, and this was a major issue on which Theodore Roosevelt split with President William Howard Taft.

Territorial Status

Juneau officially replaced Sitka as capital in 1900, but it did not begin to function as such until 1906. In the same year Alaska was finally awarded a territorial representative in Congress. A new era began for Alaska when local government was established in 1912 and it became a U.S. territory. The building of the Alaska RR from Seward to Fairbanks was commenced with government funds in 1915. Already, however, gold mining was dying out, and Alaska receded into one of its quiet periods. The fishing industry, which had gradually advanced during the gold era, became the major enterprise.

Alaska enjoyed an economic boom during World War II. The Alaska Highway was built, supplying a weak but much-needed link with the United States. After Japanese troops occupied the Aleutian islands of Attu and Kiska, U.S. forces prepared for a counterattack. Attu was retaken in May, 1943, after intense fighting, and the Japanese evacuated Kiska in August after intensive U.S. bombardments. Dutch Harbor became a major key in the U.S. defense system. The growth of air travel after the war, and the permanent military bases established in Alaska resulted in tremendous growth; between 1950 and 1960 the population nearly doubled.

Statehood to the Present

In 1958, Alaskans approved statehood by a 5 to 1 vote, and on Jan. 3, 1959, Alaska was officially admitted into the Union as a state, the first since Arizona in 1912. On Mar. 27, 1964, the strongest earthquake ever recorded in North America occurred in Alaska, taking approximately 114 lives and causing extensive property damage. Some cities were almost totally destroyed, and the fishing industry was especially hard hit, with the loss of fleets, docks, and canneries from the resulting tsunami. Reconstruction, with large-scale federal aid, was rapid. The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (1971) gave roughly 44 million acres (17.8 million hectares; 10% of the state) and almost $1 billion to Alaskan native peoples in exchange for renunciation of all aboriginal claims to land in the state. In 1989 the tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground in Prince William Sound, releasing 11 million gallons of oil into the water in the worst oil spill in U.S. history and severely damaging the ecosystem. A jury in 1994 found Exxon Corp. (now ExxonMobil) and the ship's captain negligent, but the amount of punitive damages ($507.5 million) to be paid to some 33,000 commercial fishermen and other plaintiffs was ultimately fixed by a Supreme Court decision in 2008, which severely reduced the original award ($2.5 billion).

Bibliography

See C. C. Hulley, Alaska, Past and Present (3d ed. 1970); B. Keating, Alaska (2d ed. 1971); H. W. Clark, History of Alaska (1930, repr. 1972); B. Cooper, Alaska, the Last Frontier (1973); Federal Writers' Project, A Guide to Alaska, Last American Frontier (1940, repr. 1973); L. Thomas Jr., Alaska and the Yukon (1983); R. W. Pearson and D. F. Lynch, Alaska: A Geography; J. Strohmeyer, Extreme Conditions: Big Oil and the Transformation of Alaska (1993).

Geography: Alaska

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State in northwesternmost North America bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north; Yukon, Canada, to the east; the Pacific Ocean to the south; and the Bering Sea to the west. Its capital is Juneau, and its largest city is Anchorage.

The forty-ninth state, admitted in 1959, and the largest.

Maps: Alaska

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Local Time: Alaska

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It is 5:35 PM, January 6, in Alaska.

It is 4:35 PM, January 6, in Alaska (Aleutian Islands).

Stats: Alaska

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flag of Alaska

Abbreviation: AK
Capital City: Juneau
Date of Statehood: Jan. 3, 1959
State #: 49
Population: 626,932
Area: 656,425 sq. mi. Land 570,374 sq. mi. Water 86,051 sq.mi.
Economy:
Agriculture: seafood, nursery stock, dairy products, vegetables, livestock;
Industry: petroleum and natural gas, gold and other mining, food processing, lumber and wood products, tourism
Where the name comes from: Based on an Aleut word "alaxsxaq" meaning "the mainland"
State Bird: Willow Ptarmigan
State Flower: Forget Me Not
About the Flag: Adopted in 1959. The blue field represents the sky, the sea, and mountain lakes, as well as Alaska's wildflowers. Emblazoned on the flag are eight gold stars: seven in the constellation Ursa Major, the eighth the North Star, representing the northernmost state.
State Motto: North To The Future
State Nickname: The Last Frontier
State Song: Alaska's Flag

Parks: Alaska

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Admiralty Island National Monument

Alagnak Wild River

Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge

Alaska Peninsula National Wildlife Refuge

Aleutian Islands Wilderness

Aleutian World War II National Historic Area

Anchorage Recreation Sites

Andreafsky Wilderness

Aniakchak National Monument & Preserve

Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

Beaver Creek

Becharof National Wildlife Refuge

Becharof Wilderness

Begich, Boggs Visitor Center

Bering Land Bridge National Preserve

Bering Sea Wilderness

Bogoslof Wilderness

Campbell Tract Recreation Management Area

Cape Krusenstern National Monument

Chamisso Wilderness

Chena River Lakes

Chuck River Wilderness

Chugach National Forest

Coronation Island Wilderness

Dall Sheep Viewing Area

Dalton Highway Recreation Management Area

Denali National Park & Preserve

Denali Wilderness

Endicott River Wilderness

Forrester Island Wilderness

Fort Egbert

Fortymile National Wild and Scenic River

Gates Of The Arctic National Park & Preserve

Gates of the Arctic Wilderness

Glacier Bay National Park & Preserve

Glacier Bay Wilderness

Gulkana National Wild and Scenic River

Hazy Islands Wilderness

Iditarod National HistoricTrail Recreation Management Area

Innoko National Wildlife Refuge

Innoko Wilderness

Inupiat Heritage Center

Izembek National Wildlife Refuge

Izembek Wilderness

Kachemak Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve

Kanuti National Wildlife Refuge

Karta River Wilderness

Katmai National Park & Preserve

Katmai Wilderness

Kenai Fjords National Park

Kenai National Wildlife Refuge

Kenai Wilderness

Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park

Kobuk Valley National Park

Kobuk Valley Wilderness

Kodiak National Wildlife Refuge

Kootznoowoo Wilderness

Koyukuk National Wildlife Refuge

Koyukuk Wilderness

Kuiu Wilderness

Kuskokwim Bay - Carter Spit

Lake Clark National Park & Preserve

Lake Clark Wilderness

Maurille Islands Wilderness

Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center

Misty Fiords National Monument

Misty Fjords National Monument Wilderness

Mollie Beattie Wilderness

Mosquito Lake

Noatak National Preserve

Noatak Wilderness

Nowitna National Wildlife Refuge

Nunivak Wilderness

Petersburg Creek-Duncan Salt Chuck Wilderness

Petersburg Visitor Information Center

Pleasant/Lemusurier/Inian Islands Wilderness

Russell Fjord Wilderness

Saint Lazaria Wilderness

Selawik National Wildlife Refuge

Sitka National Historical Park

South Baranof Wilderness

South Etolin Wilderness

South Prince of Wales Wilderness

Southeast Alaska Discovery Center

Stikine-LeConte Wilderness

Tebenkof Bay Wilderness

Tetlin National Wildlife Refuge

Togiak National Wildlife Refuge

Togiak Wilderness

Tongass National Forest

Tracy Arm-Fords Terror Wilderness

Tuxedni Wilderness

Unalakleet Nat'l Wild Rvr Recreation Management Area

Unimak Wilderness

University of Alaska Museum

Warren Island Wilderness

West Chichagof-Yakobi Wilderness

Western Arctic National Parklands

White Mountains National Recreation Area

Wrangell - St Elias National Park & Preserve

Wrangell-St. Elias Wilderness

Yukon - Charley Rivers National Preserve

Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge

Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge

Wikipedia: Alaska

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This article is about the U.S. State of Alaska. For other uses, see Alaska (disambiguation).

"Alaskan" redirects here. For other uses, see Alaskan (disambiguation).

State of Alaska


Flag	Seal
Nickname(s): The Last Frontier
Motto(s): North to the Future
before statehood, known as the Alaska Territory

Official language(s)

None^[1]^[2]

Spoken language(s)

English 89.7%,
Native North American 5.2%,
Spanish 2.9%

Demonym

Alaskan

Capital

Juneau

Largest city

Anchorage

Area

Ranked 1^st in the US

- Total

663,268 sq mi
(1,717,854 km²)

- Width

2,261 miles (3,639 km)

- Length

1,420 miles (2,285 km)

- % water

13.77

- Latitude

51°20'N to 71°50'N

- Longitude

130°W to 172°E

Population

Ranked 47^th in the US

- Total

698,473 (2009 est.)^[3]
626,932 (2000)

- Density

1.03/sq mi (0.4/km²)
Ranked 50^th in the US

- Median income

US$64,333 (4th)

Elevation

- Highest point

Mount McKinley^[4]
20,320 ft (6,193.7 m)

- Mean

1900 ft (580 m)

- Lowest point

Pacific Ocean^[4]
0 ft (0 m)

Admission to Union

January 3, 1959 (49th)

Governor

Sean Parnell (R)

Lieutenant Governor

Craig Campbell (R)

U.S. Senators

Lisa Murkowski (R)
Mark Begich (D)

U.S. House delegation

Don Young (R) (list)

Time zones

- east of 169° 30'

Alaska: UTC-9/DST-8

- west of 169° 30'

Aleutian: UTC-10/DST-9

Abbreviations

AK US-AK

Website

http://www.alaska.gov

Alaska State Symbols

The Flag of Alaska.

Animate insignia
Bird(s)	Willow Ptarmigan
Fish	King Salmon
Flower(s)	Forget-me-not
Insect	Four-spotted Skimmer Dragonfly
Mammal(s)	Moose, Bowhead whale
Tree	Sitka Spruce

Inanimate insignia
Fossil	Woolly mammoth
Mineral	Gold
Rock	Jade
Slogan(s)	Beyond Your Dreams, Within Your Reach
Soil	Tanana
Song(s)	Alaska's Flag
Sport	Mushing

Route marker(s)


State Quarter

Released in 2008

Lists of United States state insignia

Alaska ( /əˈlæskə/ (help·info)) is the largest state of the United States of America by area; it is situated in the northwest extremity of the North American continent, with Canada to the east, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the west and south, with Russia further west across the Bering Strait. Approximately half of Alaska's 698,473 residents reside within the Anchorage metropolitan area. As of 2009, Alaska remains the least densely populated state of the U.S.^[5]

The U.S. Senate approved the purchase of Alaska from the Russian Empire on March 30, 1867, for $7.2 million at about two cents per acre ($4.74/km²). The land went through several administrative changes before becoming an organized territory on May 11, 1912, and the 49th state of the U.S. on January 3, 1959. The name "Alaska" (Аляска) was already introduced in the Russian colonial time, when it was used only for the peninsula and is derived from the Aleut alaxsxaq, meaning "the mainland" or more literally, "the object towards which the action of the sea is directed".^[6] It is also known as Alyeska, the "great land", an Aleut word derived from the same root.

Geography

This section may be too long to read and navigate comfortably. Please consider moving more of the content into sub-articles and using this article for a summary of the key points of the subject. (October 2009)

Main article: Geography of Alaska

Alaska's size compared with the 48 contiguous states.

Alaska has a longer coastline than all the other U.S. states combined.^[7] It is the only non-contiguous U.S. state on continental North America; about 500 miles (800 km) of British Columbia (Canada) separate Alaska from Washington state. Alaska is thus an exclave of the United States. It is technically part of the continental U.S., but is often not included in colloquial use; Alaska is not part of the contiguous U.S., often called "the Lower 48."^[8] The capital city, Juneau, is situated on the mainland of the North American continent, but is not connected by road to the rest of the North American highway system.

The state is bordered by the Yukon Territory and British Columbia in Canada, to the east, the Gulf of Alaska and the Pacific Ocean to the south, the Bering Sea, Bering Strait, and Chukchi Sea to the west and the Arctic Ocean to the north. Alaska's territorial waters touch Russia's territorial waters in the Bering Strait, as the Russian and Alaskan islands are only 3 miles (4.8 km) apart. As it extends into the eastern hemisphere, it is technically both the westernmost and easternmost state in the United States, as well as also being the northernmost.

Alaska is the largest state in the United States in land area at 586,412 square miles (1,518,800 km²), much larger than Texas, the next largest state. Alaska is larger than all but 18 sovereign countries.

Counting territorial waters, Alaska is larger than the combined area of the next three largest states: Texas, California, and Montana. It is also larger than the combined area of the 22 smallest U.S. states.

The regions:^[9]

Southcentral
Southeastern or Panhandle
Interior
Southwest
Arctic or North Slope

The International Date Line was drawn west of 180° to keep the whole state, and thus the entire North American continent, within the same legal day.

Natural features

With its myriad islands, Alaska has nearly 34,000 miles (54,720 km) of tidal shoreline. The Aleutian Islands chain extends west from the southern tip of the Alaska Peninsula. Many active volcanoes are found in the Aleutians. Unimak Island, for example, is home to Mount Shishaldin, which is an occasionally smoldering volcano that rises to 10,000 feet (3,000 m) above the North Pacific. It is the most perfect volcanic cone on Earth, even more symmetrical than Japan's Mount Fuji. The chain of volcanoes extends to Mount Spurr, west of Anchorage on the mainland. Alaska has the most volcanoes of any of the fifty US states.^[10] Geologists have identified Alaska as part of Wrangellia, a large region consisting of multiple states and Canadian provinces in the Pacific Northwest which is actively undergoing continent building.

One of the world's largest tides occurs in Turnagain Arm, just south of Anchorage – tidal differences can be more than 35 feet (10.7 m). (Many sources say Turnagain has the second-greatest tides in North America, but several areas in Canada have larger tides.)^[11]

Alaska has more than three million lakes.^[12]^[13] Marshlands and wetland permafrost cover 188,320 square miles (487,747 km²) (mostly in northern, western and southwest flatlands). Frozen water, in the form of glacier ice, covers some 16,000 square miles (41,440 km²) of land and 1,200 square miles (3,110 km²) of tidal zone. The Bering Glacier complex near the southeastern border with Yukon covers 2,250 square miles (5,827 km²) alone. With over 100,000 of them, Alaska has half of the world's glaciers.

Land ownership

Alaska has more acres of public land owned by the federal government than any other state.^[14]

According to an October 1998 report by the United States Bureau of Land Management, approximately 65% of Alaska is owned and managed by the U.S. federal government as public lands, including a multitude of national forests, national parks, and national wildlife refuges. Of these, the Bureau of Land Management manages 87 million acres (350,000 km²), or 23.8% of the state. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is managed by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. It is the world's largest wildlife refuge, comprising 16 million acres (65,000 km²).

Of the remaining land area, the State of Alaska owns 101 million acres (410,000 km²); another 44 million acres (180,000 km²) are owned by 12 regional and dozens of local Native corporations created under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. Thus, indirectly, the 84,000 Eskimo, Aleut and American Indian inhabitants of Alaska own one-ninth of the state. Various private interests own the remaining land, totaling about one percent of the state.

Climate

Main article: Climate of Alaska

The climate in Juneau and the southeast panhandle is a mid-latitude oceanic climate (Köppen climate classification Cfb) in the southern sections and a subarctic oceanic climate (Köppen Cfc) in the northern parts. On an annual basis, the panhandle is both the wettest and warmest part of Alaska with milder temperatures in the winter and high precipitation throughout the year. Juneau averages over 50 inches (1,270 mm) of precipitation a year, while other areas receive over 275 inches (6,990 mm).^[15] This is also the only region in Alaska in which the average daytime high temperature is above freezing during the winter months.

The climate of Anchorage and south central Alaska is mild by Alaskan standards due to the region's proximity to the seacoast. While the area gets less rain than southeast Alaska, it gets more snow, and days tend to be clearer. On average, Anchorage receives 16 inches (406 mm) of precipitation a year, with around 75 inches (1,905 mm) of snow, although there are areas in the south central which receive far more snow. It is a subarctic climate (Köppen Dfc) due to its brief, cool summers.

Barrow, Alaska is the northernmost city in the United States.

The climate of Western Alaska is determined in large part by the Bering Sea and the Gulf of Alaska. It is a subarctic oceanic climate in the southwest and a continental subarctic climate farther north. The temperature is somewhat moderate considering how far north the area is. This area has a tremendous amount of variety in precipitation. The northern side of the Seward Peninsula is technically a desert with less than 10 inches (250 mm) of precipitation annually, while some locations between Dillingham and Bethel average around 100 inches (2,540 mm) of precipitation.^[15]

The climate of the interior of Alaska is subarctic. Some of the highest and lowest temperatures in Alaska occur around the area near Fairbanks. The summers may have temperatures reaching into the 90s°F (the low to mid 30s °C), while in the winter, the temperature can fall below −60 °F (-52 °C). Precipitation is sparse in the Interior, often less than 10 inches (250 mm) a year, but what precipitation falls in the winter tends to stay the entire winter.

The highest and lowest recorded temperatures in Alaska are both in the Interior. The highest is 100 °F (38 °C) in Fort Yukon (which is just 8 miles (13 km) inside the arctic circle) on June 27, 1915,^[16]^[17] tied with Pahala, Hawaii as the lowest high temperature in the United States.^[18]^[19] The lowest official Alaska temperature is −80 °F (-62 °C) in Prospect Creek on January 23, 1971,^[16]^[17] one degree above the lowest temperature recorded in continental North America (in Snag, Yukon, Canada).^[20]

The climate in the extreme north of Alaska is Arctic (Köppen ET) with long, very cold winters and short, cool summers. Even in July, the average low temperature in Barrow is 34 °F (1 °C).^[21] Precipitation is light in this part of Alaska, with many places averaging less than 10 inches (250 mm) per year, mostly in the form of snow which stays on the ground almost the entire year.

History

Main article: History of Alaska

Miners and prospectors climb the Chilkoot Trail during the Klondike Gold Rush.

The first European contact with Alaska occurred in the year 1741, when Vitus Bering led an expedition for the Russian Navy aboard the St. Peter. After his crew returned to Russia bearing sea otter pelts judged to be the finest fur in the world, small associations of fur traders began to sail from the shores of Siberia towards the Aleutian islands. The first permanent European settlement was founded in 1784, and the Russian-American Company carried out an expanded colonization program during the early to mid-1800s. New Archangel on Kodiak Island was Alaska's first capital, but for a century under both Russia and the U.S. Sitka was the capital. The Russians never fully colonized Alaska, and the colony was never very profitable. William H. Seward, the U.S. Secretary of State, negotiated the Alaskan purchase with the Russians in 1867 for $7.2 million. Alaska was loosely governed by the military initially, and was unofficially a territory of the United States from 1884 on.

In the 1890s, gold rushes in Alaska and the nearby Yukon Territory brought thousands of miners and settlers to Alaska. Alaska was granted official territorial status in 1912. At this time the capital was moved to Juneau.

During World War II, the Aleutian Islands Campaign focused on the three outer Aleutian Islands – Attu, Agattu and Kiska^[22] – that were invaded by Japanese troops and occupied between June 1942 and August 1943. Unalaska/Dutch Harbor became a significant base for the U.S. Army Air Corps and Navy submariners.

The U.S. Lend-Lease program involved the flying of American warplanes through Canada to Fairbanks and thence Nome; Soviet pilots took possession of these aircraft, ferrying them to fight the German invasion of the Soviet Union. The construction of military bases contributed to the population growth of some Alaskan cities.

Statehood was approved on July 7, 1958. Alaska was officially proclaimed a state on January 3, 1959.

In 1964, the massive "Good Friday Earthquake" killed 131 people and destroyed several villages, mainly by the resultant tsunamis. It was the second most powerful earthquake in the recorded history of the world, with a moment magnitude of 9.2. It was over one thousand times more powerful than the 1989 San Francisco earthquake. Luckily, the epicenter was in an unpopulated area or thousands more would have been killed.

The 1968 discovery of oil at Prudhoe Bay and the 1977 completion of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline led to an oil boom. In 1989, the Exxon Valdez hit a reef in the Prince William Sound, spilling over 11 million gallons of crude oil over 1,100 miles (1,600 km) of coastline. Today, the battle between philosophies of development and conservation is seen in the contentious debate over oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Demographics

Main article: Demographics of Alaska

Historical populations
Census	Pop.	%±
1880	33,426	—
1890	32,052	−4.1%
1900	63,592	98.4%
1910	64,356	1.2%
1920	55,036	−14.5%
1930	59,278	7.7%
1940	72,524	22.3%
1950	128,643	77.4%
1960	226,167	75.8%
1970	300,382	32.8%
1980	401,851	33.8%
1990	550,043	36.9%
2000	626,932	14.0%
Est. 2009^[3]	698,473	11.4%
1930 and 1940 censuses taken in preceding autumn

The United States Census Bureau, as of July 1, 2008, estimated Alaska's population at 686,293,^[3] which represents an increase of 59,361, or 9.5%, since the last census in 2000.^[23] This includes a natural increase since the last census of 60,994 people (that is 86,062 births minus 25,068 deaths) and a decrease due to net migration of 5,469 people out of the state.^[23] Immigration from outside the U.S. resulted in a net increase of 4,418 people, and migration within the country produced a net loss of 9,887 people.^[23] In 2000 Alaska ranked the 48th state by population, ahead of Vermont and Wyoming (and Washington D.C.).^[24] Alaska is the least densely populated state, and one of the most sparsely populated areas in the world, at 1.0 person per square mile (0.42/km²), with the next state, Wyoming, at 5.1 per square mile (1.97/km²). Alaska is the largest U.S. state by area, and the sixth wealthiest (per capita income).

Race and ancestry

According to the 2000 U.S. Census, White Americans made up 69.3% of Alaska's population. African Americans made up 3.5% of Alaska's population. In addition, American Indians and Alaska Natives were the largest minority group; they made up 15.6% of Alaska's population. Asian Americans made up 4.0% of Alaska's population. Pacific Islander Americans made up 0.5% of Alaska's population. Individuals from some other race made up 1.6% of Alaska's population while individuals from two or more races made up 5.4% of the state's population. In addition, Hispanics and Latinos made up 4.1% of Alaska's population.^[25]

In terms of ancestry, German Americans were the largest single ethnic group in Alaska; they made up 16.6% of Alaska's population and they were the only ethnic group in the state to number over 100,000 members. Irish Americans made up 10.8% of Alaska's population while English Americans made up 9.6% of the state's population. Norwegian Americans made up 4.2% of Alaska's population and French Americans made up 3.2% of the state's population.^[26]

As of the 2005–2007 American Community Survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau, White Americans made up 68.5% of Alaska's population. Blacks or African Americans made up 3.8% of Alaska's population. American Indians and Alaska Natives made up 13.4% of Alaska's population; still remaining the largest minority group. Asian Americans made up 4.6% of Alaska's population. Pacific Islander Americans remained at 0.5% of the state's population. Individuals from some other race made up 1.9% of Alaska's population while individuals from two or more races made up 7.2% of the state's population. Hispanics or Latinos made up 5.5% of Alaska's population.^[27]

In terms of ancestry, German Americans remained the largest single ethnic group in Alaska; they made up 19.3% of Alaska's population and were still the only ethnic group in the state with over 100,000 members. Irish Americans made up 12.5% of Alaska's population while English Americans made up 10.8% of the state's population. Norwegian Americans remained at 4.2% of Alaska's population and French Americans made up 3.6% of the state's population.^[28]

Languages

St. Michael's Russian Orthodox Cathedral in Sitka, Alaska

According to the 2005–2007 American Community Survey, 84.7% of people over the age of five speak only English at home. About 3.5% speak Spanish at home. About 2.2% speak another Indo-European language at home and about 4.3% speak an Asian language at home. And about 5.3% speak other languages at home.^[29]

A total of 5.2% of Alaskans speak one of the state's 22 indigenous languages, known locally as "native languages". These languages belong to two major language families: Eskimo-Aleut and Na-Dene. As the homeland of these two major language families of North America, Alaska has been described as the crossroads of the continent, providing evidence for the recent settlement of North America via the Bering land bridge.

Religion

Alaska has been identified, along with Pacific Northwest states Washington and Oregon, as being the least religious in the U.S.^[30]^[31] According to statistics collected by the Association of Religion Data Archives, about 39% of Alaska residents were members of religious congregations. Evangelical Protestants had 78,070 members, Roman Catholics had 54,359, and mainline Protestants had 37,156.^[32] After Catholics and Eastern Orthodox, the largest single denominations are The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormons/LDS) with 29,460, Southern Baptists with 22,959, and Orthodox with 20,000. The large Eastern Orthodox (with 49 parishes and up to 50,000 followers)^[33] population is a result of early Russian colonization and missionary work among Alaska Natives.^[34] In 1795, the First Russian Orthodox Church was established in Kodiak. Intermarriage with Alaskan Natives helped the Russian immigrants integrate into society. As a result, more and more Russian Orthodox churches^[35] gradually became established within Alaska. Alaska also has the largest Quaker population (by percentage) of any state.^[36] In 2003 there were 3,000 Jews in Alaska (for whom observance of the mitzvah may pose special problems).^[37] Estimates for the number of Alaskan Muslims range from 2,000^[38]^[39] to 5,000.^[40] Alaskan Hindus often share venues and celebrations with members of other religious communities including Sikhs and Jains.^[41]^[42]^[43]

Economy

Alaska State Quarter

The Trans-Alaska Pipeline transports oil, Alaska's most important export, from the North Slope to Valdez. Pertinent are the heat pipes in the column mounts.

Alaska ranks 5th nationally in craft breweries per capita.^[44]

The 2007 gross state product was $44.9 billion, 45th in the nation. Its per capita personal income for 2007 was $40,042, ranking 15th in the nation. The oil and gas industry dominates the Alaskan economy, with more than 80% of the state's revenues derived from petroleum extraction. Alaska's main export product (excluding oil and natural gas) is seafood, primarily salmon, cod, Pollock and crab. Agriculture represents only a fraction of the Alaskan economy. Agricultural production is primarily for consumption within the state and includes nursery stock, dairy products, vegetables, and livestock. Manufacturing is limited, with most foodstuffs and general goods imported from elsewhere. Employment is primarily in government and industries such as natural resource extraction, shipping, and transportation. Military bases are a significant component of the economy in both Fairbanks and Anchorage. Federal subsidies are also an important part of the economy, allowing the state to keep taxes low. Its industrial outputs are crude petroleum, natural gas, coal, gold, precious metals, zinc and other mining, seafood processing, timber and wood products. There is also a growing service and tourism sector. Tourists have contributed to the economy by supporting local lodging.

Energy

Permanent Fund

The Alaska Permanent Fund is a legislatively controlled appropriation established in 1976 to manage a surplus in state petroleum revenues from the recently constructed Trans-Alaska Pipeline System. From its initial principal of $734,000, the fund has grown to $40 billion as a result of oil royalties and capital investment programs.^[48] Starting in 1982, dividends from the fund's annual growth have been paid out each year to eligible Alaskans, ranging from $331.29 in 1984 to $3,269.00 in 2008 (which included a one-time $1200 "Resource Rebate"). Every year, the state legislature takes out 8 percent from the earnings, puts 3 percent back into the principal for inflation proofing, and the remaining 5 percent is distributed to all qualifying Alaskans. To qualify for the Alaska State Permanent Fund one must have lived in the state for a minimum of 12 months, and maintain constant residency.^[49]

Cost of living

The cost of goods in Alaska has long been higher than in the contiguous 48 states. This has changed for the most part in Anchorage and to a lesser extent in Fairbanks, where the cost of living has dropped somewhat in the past five years. Federal government employees, particularly United States Postal Service (USPS) workers and active-duty military members, receive a Cost of Living Allowance usually set at 25% of base pay because, while the cost of living has gone down, it is still one of the highest in the country.

The introduction of big-box stores in Anchorage, Fairbanks (Wal-Mart in March 2004), and Juneau also did much to lower prices. However, 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. Many rural residents come into these cities and purchase food and goods in bulk from warehouse clubs like Costco and Sam's Club. Some have embraced the free shipping offers^[50] of some online retailers to purchase items much more cheaply than they could in their own communities, if they are available at all.

Agriculture

Due to the northern climate and steep terrain, relatively little farming occurs in Alaska. Most farms are in either the Matanuska Valley, about 40 miles (64 km) northeast of Anchorage, or on the Kenai Peninsula, about 60 miles (97 km) southwest of Anchorage. The short 100-day growing season limits the crops that can be grown, but the long sunny summer days make for productive growing seasons. The primary crops are potatoes, carrots, lettuce, and cabbage. Farmers exhibit produce at the Alaska State Fair. "Alaska Grown" is used as an agricultural slogan.

Alaska has an abundance of seafood, with the primary fisheries in the Bering Sea and the North Pacific, and seafood is one of the few food items that is often cheaper within the state than outside it. Many Alaskans fish the rivers during salmon season to gather significant quantities of their household diet while fishing for subsistence, sport, or both.

Hunting for subsistence, primarily caribou, moose, and Dall sheep is still common in the state, particularly in remote Bush communities. An example of a traditional native food is Akutaq, the Eskimo ice cream, which can consist of reindeer fat, seal oil, dried fish meat and local berries.

Most food in Alaska is transported into the state from "outside", and shipping costs make food in the cities relatively expensive. In rural areas, subsistence hunting and gathering is an essential activity because imported food is prohibitively expensive. The cost of importing food to villages begins at 7¢ per pound (15¢/kg) and rises rapidly to 50¢ per pound ($1.10/kg) or more. The cost of delivering a seven-pound gallon of milk is about $3.50 in many villages where per capita income can be $20,000 or less. Fuel for snow machines and boats that consume a couple gallons per hour can exceed $8.00.

Transportation

Main article: Transportation in Alaska

Roads

Sterling Highway.

Rail

Alaska Railroad "Glacier Discovery" train

Built around 1915, the Alaska Railroad (ARR) played a key role in the development of Alaska through the 20th century. It links north Pacific shipping through providing critical infrastructure with tracks that run from Seward to Interior Alaska via South Central Alaska, passing through Anchorage, Eklutna, Wasilla, Talkeetna, Denali, and Fairbanks, with spurs to Whittier, Palmer and North Pole. The cities, towns, villages, and region served by ARR tracks are known statewide as "The Railbelt". In recent years, the ever-improving paved highway system began to eclipse the railroad's importance in Alaska's economy.

The railroad, though famed for its summertime tour passenger service, played a vital role in Alaska's development, moving freight into Alaska while transporting natural resources southward (i.e., coal from the Usibelli coal mine near Healy to Seward and gravel from the Matanuska Valley to Anchorage.)

The 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. It continues to offer one of the last flag stop routes in the country. A stretch of about 60 miles (100 km) of track along an area north of Talkeetna remains inaccessible by road; the railroad provides the only transportation to rural homes and cabins in the area; until construction of the Parks Highway in the 1970s, the railroad provided the only land access to most of the region along its entire route.

In northern Southeast Alaska, the White Pass and Yukon Railroad also partly runs through the State from Skagway northwards into Canada (British Columbia and Yukon Territory), crossing the border at White Pass Summit. This line is now mainly used by tourists, often arriving by cruise liner at Skagway. It featured in the 1983 BBC television series Great Little Railways.

Marine transport

Most cities, towns and villages in the state do not have road or highway access; the only modes of access involve travel by air, river, or the sea.

Alaska's well-developed state-owned ferry system (known as the Alaska Marine Highway) serves the cities of Southeast, the Gulf Coast and the Alaska Peninsula. The system also operates a ferry service from Bellingham, Washington and Prince Rupert, British Columbia in Canada via the Inside Passage to Skagway. The Inter-Island Ferry Authority also serves as an important marine link for many communities in the Prince of Wales Island region of Southeast and works in concert with the Alaska Marine Highway.

In recent years, large cruise ships began creating a summertime tourism market, mainly connecting the Pacific Northwest to Southeast Alaska and, to a lesser degree, towns along the north gulf coast. Several times each summer, the population of Ketchikan sharply rises for a few hours when two ships dock to debark more than a thousand passengers each while four other ships lie at anchor nearby, waiting their turn at the dock.

Air transport

Alaska Airlines Boeing 737-700

Cities not served by road, sea, or river can be reached only by air, foot, dogsled, or snowmachine accounting for Alaska's extremely well-developed bush air services—an Alaskan novelty. Anchorage itself, and to a lesser extent Fairbanks, are served by many major airlines. Because of limited highway access, air travel remains the most efficient form of transportation in and out of the state. Anchorage recently completed extensive remodeling and construction at Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport to help accommodate the upsurge in tourism (in 2000–2001, the latest year for which data is available, 2.4 million total arrivals to Alaska were counted, 1.7 million via air travel; 1.4 million were visitors).^[52]^[53]

Regular flights to most villages and towns within the state that are commercially viable are challenging to provide, so they are heavily subsidized by the federal government through the Essential Air Service program. Alaska Airlines is the only major airline offering in-state travel with jet service (sometimes in combination cargo and passenger Boeing 737-400s) 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. The bulk of remaining commercial flight offerings come from small regional commuter airlines such as Era Aviation, PenAir, and Frontier Flying Service. The smallest towns and villages must rely on scheduled or chartered bush flying services using general aviation aircraft such as the Cessna Caravan, the most popular aircraft in use in the state. Much of this service can be attributed to the Alaska bypass mail program which subsidizes bulk mail delivery to Alaskan rural communities. The program requires 70% of that subsidy to go to carriers who offer passenger service to the communities. Many communities have small air taxi services, such as Hudson's Air Service, Kantishna Air Taxi, and Talkeetna Air Taxi. These operations, though now catering primarily to tourists, originated from the demand for customized transport to remote areas. Perhaps the most quintessentially Alaskan plane is the bush seaplane. The world's busiest seaplane base is Lake Hood, located next to Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport, where flights bound for remote villages without an airstrip carry passengers, cargo, and many items from stores and warehouse clubs. Alaska has the highest number of pilots per capita of any U.S. state: out of the estimated 663,661 residents, 8,550 are pilots, or about one in 78.^[54]

Other transport

Another Alaskan transportation method is the dogsled. In modern times (that is, any time after the mid-late 1920s), dog mushing is more of a sport than a true means of transportation. Various races are held around the state, but the best known is the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, a 1150-mile (1850 km) trail from Anchorage to Nome (although the mileage varies from year to year, the official distance is set at 1049 miles). The race commemorates the famous 1925 serum run to Nome in which mushers and dogs like Togo and Balto took much-needed medicine to the diphtheria-stricken community of Nome when all other means of transportation had failed. Mushers from all over the world come to Anchorage each March to compete for cash, prizes, and prestige. The "Serum Run" is another sled dog race that more accurately follows the route of the famous 1925 relay, leaving from the community of Nenana (southwest of Fairbanks) to Nome.^[55]

President Dwight Eisenhower admitted in his autobiography that he pushed to have Alaska admitted into the union as a state, partially because he wanted an American win in the 1959 World Sled Dog Championships, held in Finland. The previous W.S.D.C. titles had been won by the Soviet Union.

In areas not served by road or rail, primary transportation in summer is by all-terrain vehicle and in winter by snowmobile or "snow machine," as it is commonly referred to in Alaska.

Law and government

Main article: Government of Alaska

State government

Like all other U.S. states, Alaska is governed as a republic, with three branches of government: an executive branch consisting of the Governor of Alaska and the other independently elected constitutional officers; a legislative branch consisting of the Alaska House of Representatives and Alaska Senate; and a judicial branch consisting of the Alaska Supreme Court and lower courts.

The State of Alaska employs approximately 15,000 employees statewide.^[56]

The Alaska Legislature consists of a 40-member House of Representatives and a 20-member Senate. Senators serve four year terms and House members two. The Governor of Alaska serves four-year terms. The lieutenant governor runs separately from the governor in the primaries, but during the general election, the nominee for governor and nominee for lieutenant governor run together on the same ticket.

Alaska's court system has four levels: the Alaska Supreme Court, the court of appeals, the superior courts and the district courts.^[57] The superior and district courts are trial courts. Superior courts are courts of general jurisdiction, while district courts only hear certain types of cases, including misdemeanor criminal cases and civil cases valued up to $100,000.^[57] The Supreme Court and the Court Of Appeals are appellate courts. The Court Of Appeals is required to hear appeals from certain lower-court decisions, including those regarding criminal prosecutions, juvenile delinquency, and habeas corpus.^[57] The Supreme Court hears civil appeals and may in its discretion hear criminal appeals.^[57]

State politics

Although Alaska entered the union as a Democratic state, since the early 1970s Alaska has been characterized as a Republican-leaning state.^[58] Local political communities have often worked on issues related to land use development, fishing, tourism, and individual rights. Alaska Natives, while organized in and around their communities, have been active within the Native corporations. These have been given ownership over large tracts of land, which require stewardship.

Alaska is the only state in which possession of one ounce or less of marijuana in one's home is completely legal under state law, though the federal law remains in force.^[59]

The state has an independence movement favoring a vote on secession from the United States, with the Alaska Independence Party labeled as one of "the most significant state-level third parties operating in the 20th century".^[60]

Six Republicans and four Democrats have served as governor of Alaska. In addition, Republican Governor Wally Hickel was elected to the office for a second term in 1990 after leaving the Republican party and briefly joining the Alaskan Independence Party ticket just long enough to be reelected. He subsequently officially rejoined the Republican party in 1994.

Further information: Political party strength in Alaska

Taxes

To finance state government operations, Alaska depends primarily on petroleum revenues and federal subsidies. This allows it to have the lowest individual tax burden in the United States,^[61] and be one of only five states with no state sales tax, one of seven states that do not levy an individual income tax, and one of two states that has neither. The Department of Revenue Tax Division^[62] reports regularly on the state's revenue sources. The Department also issues an annual overview of its operations, including new state laws that directly affect the tax division.

While Alaska has no state sales tax, 89 municipalities collect a local sales tax, from 1–7.5%, typically 3–5%. Other local taxes levied include raw fish taxes, hotel, motel, and bed-and-breakfast 'bed' taxes, severance taxes, liquor and tobacco taxes, gaming (pull tabs) taxes, tire taxes and fuel transfer taxes. A percentage of revenue collected from certain state taxes and license fees (such as petroleum, aviation motor fuel, telephone cooperative) is shared with municipalities in Alaska.

Fairbanks has one of the highest property taxes in the state as no sales or income taxes are assessed in the Fairbanks North Star Borough (FNSB). A sales tax for the FNSB has been voted on many times, but has yet to be approved, leading law makers to increase taxes dramatically on other goods such as liquor and tobacco.

In 2008 the Tax Foundation ranked Alaska as having the 4th most "business friendly" tax policy. More "friendly" states were Wyoming, Nevada, and South Dakota.^[63]

Federal politics

**Presidential elections results**
Year	Republican	Democratic
2008	59.49% 192,631	37.83% 122,485
2004	61.07% 190,889	35.52% 111,025
2000	58.62% 167,398	27.67% 79,004
1996	50.80% 122,746	33.27% 80,380
1992	39.46% 102,000	30.29% 78,294
1988	59.59% 119,251	36.27% 72,584
1984	66.65% 138,377	29.87% 62,007
1980	54.35% 86,112	26.41% 41,842
1976	57.90% 71,555	35.65% 44,058
1972	58.13% 55,349	34.62% 32,967
1968	45.28% 37,600	42.65% 35,411
1964	34.09% 22,930	65.91% 44,329
1960	50.94% 30,953	49.06% 29,809

In presidential elections, the state's electoral college votes have been won by the Republican nominee in every election since statehood, except for 1964. No state has voted for a Democratic presidential candidate fewer times. Alaska supported Democratic nominee Lyndon B. Johnson in the landslide year of 1964, although the 1960 and 1968 elections were close. Republican John McCain defeated Democrat Barack Obama in Alaska, 59.49% to 37.83%. McCain's running mate was Sarah Palin, the state's governor and the first Alaskan on a major party ticket. The Alaska Bush, the city of Juneau and midtown and downtown Anchorage have been strongholds of the Democratic party. Matanuska-Susitna Borough and South Anchorage typically have the strongest Republican showing. As of 2004, well over half of all registered voters have chosen "Non-Partisan" or "Undeclared" as their affiliation,^[64] despite recent attempts to close primaries.

Because of its population relative to other U.S. states, Alaska has only one member in the U.S. House of Representatives. This seat is currently being held by Republican Don Young, who was re-elected to his 19th consecutive term in 2008.

On November 19, 2008, long time Republican senator Ted Stevens was defeated by Democratic Anchorage mayor Mark Begich. Stevens had been convicted on seven felony counts of failing to report gifts on Senate financial discloser forms one week prior to the election. The conviction was set aside in April 2009 after evidence of prosecutorial misconduct emerged.

Republican Frank Murkowski held the state's other senatorial position. After being elected governor in 2002, he resigned from the Senate and appointed his daughter, State Representative Lisa Murkowski as his successor. In response to a subsequent ballot initiative, the state legislature attempted to amend the law to limit the length of gubernatorial appointments. She won a full six-year term in 2004. In 2006 Frank Murkowski was defeated in the Republican primary by Sarah Palin, who in 2008 became the Republican nominee for Vice President of the United States.

Cities, towns and boroughs

Anchorage, Alaska's largest city

Fairbanks

Alaska's capital city, Juneau

Alaska is not divided into counties, as most of the other U.S. states, but it is divided into boroughs. Many of the more densely populated parts of the state are part of Alaska's sixteen boroughs, which function somewhat similarly to counties in other states. However, unlike county-equivalents in the other 49 states, the boroughs do not cover the entire land area of the state. The area not part of any borough is referred to as the Unorganized Borough. The Unorganized Borough has no government of its own, but the U.S. Census Bureau in cooperation with the state divided the Unorganized Borough into 11 census areas solely for the purposes of statistical analysis and presentation. A recording district is a mechanism for administration of the public record in Alaska. The state is divided into 34 recording districts which are centrally administered under a State Recorder. All recording districts use the same acceptance criteria, fee schedule, etc., for accepting documents into the public record.

Whereas many U.S. states use a three-tiered system of decentralization—state/county/township—most of Alaska uses only two tiers—state/borough. Owing to the low population density, most of the land is located in the Unorganized Borough which, as the name implies, has no intermediate borough government of its own, but is administered directly by the state government. Currently (2000 census) 57.71% of Alaska's area has this status, with 13.05% of the population. For statistical purposes the United States Census Bureau divides this territory into census areas. Anchorage merged the city government with the Greater Anchorage Area Borough in 1975 to form the Municipality of Anchorage, containing the city proper and the communities of Eagle River, Chugiak, Peters Creek, Girdwood, Bird, and Indian. Fairbanks has a separate borough (the Fairbanks North Star Borough) and municipality (the City of Fairbanks).

The state's most populous city is Anchorage, home to 278,700 people in 2006, 225,744 of whom live in the urbanized area. The richest location in Alaska by per capita income is Halibut Cove ($89,895). Yakutat City, Sitka, Juneau, and Anchorage are the four largest cities in the U.S. by area.

Cities of 100,000 or more people

Anchorage

Towns of 10,000–100,000 people

College (a census-designated place adjacent to Fairbanks)
Fairbanks
Juneau (State Capital)
Wasilla

Towns of 1,000–10,000 people

Smaller towns: Alaska has many smaller towns, especially in the Alaska Bush. These latter are generally inaccessible by road.

Education

The Alaska Department of Education and Early Development administers many school districts in Alaska. In addition, the state operates a boarding school, Mt. Edgecumbe High School in Sitka; and provides partial funding for other boarding schools including, Nenana Student Living Center in Nenana, and The Galena Interior Learning Academy in Galena.^[65]

There are more than a dozen colleges and universities in Alaska. Accredited universities in Alaska include the University of Alaska Anchorage, University of Alaska Fairbanks, University of Alaska Southeast, and Alaska Pacific University.^[66] 43% of the population attends or attended college.^{[citation needed]}

Alaska has had a problem with a "brain drain". Many of its young people, including most of the highest academic achievers, leave the state after high school graduation and do not return. The University of Alaska has attempted to combat this by offering partial four-year scholarships to the top 10% of Alaska high school graduates, via the Alaska Scholars Program.^[67]

Public health and public safety

Alaska residents have long had a problem with alcohol use and abuse.^{[citation needed]} Many rural communities in Alaska have outlawed its import.^[68] This problem directly relates to Alaska's high rate of Fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) as well as contributing to the high rate of suicides and teenage pregnancies.^{[citation needed]} Suicide rates for rural residents are higher than urban.^[69]

Domestic abuse and other violent crimes are also at high levels in the state; this is in part linked to alcohol abuse.^[70]

Culture

See also List of artists and writers from Alaska

Please help improve this section by expanding it. Further information might be found on the talk page. (April 2007)

Some of Alaska's popular annual events are the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race that starts in Anchorage and ends in Nome, World Ice Art Championships in Fairbanks, the Alaska Hummingbird Festival in Ketchikan, the Sitka Whale Fest, and the Stikine River Garnet Fest in Wrangell. The Stikine River features the largest springtime concentration of American Bald Eagles in the world.

The Alaska Native Heritage Center celebrates the rich heritage of Alaska's 11 cultural groups. Their purpose is to enhance self-esteem among Native people and to encourage cross-cultural exchanges among all people. The Alaska Native Arts Foundation promotes and markets Native art from all regions and cultures in the State, both on the internet; at its gallery in Anchorage, 500 West Sixth Avenue, and at the Alaska House New York, 109 Mercer Street in SoHo.^[71]

Alaska Natives – Inuit, Inupiaq or Yupik drummers and dancers – give informal performances in the lobby of the Alaska Native Medical Center in Anchorage on weekday evenings.

Libraries

The four main libraries in the state are the Alaska State Library in Juneau, the Elmer E. Rasmuson Library in Fairbanks, the Z. J. Loussac Library in Anchorage, and the UAA/APU Consortium Library, also in Anchorage. Alaska is one of three states (the others are Delaware and Rhode Island) that does not have a Carnegie library.

Music

Main article: Music of Alaska

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. Prominent musicians from Alaska include singer Jewel, traditional Aleut flautist Mary Youngblood, folk singer-songwriter Libby Roderick, Christian music singer/songwriter Lincoln Brewster, metal/post hardcore band 36 Crazyfists and the groups Pamyua and Portugal. The Man.

There are many established music festivals in Alaska, including the Alaska Folk Festival, the Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival the Anchorage Folk Festival, the Athabascan Old-Time Fiddling Festival, the Sitka Jazz Festival, and the Sitka Summer Music Festival. The most prominent symphony in Alaska is the Anchorage Symphony Orchestra, though the Fairbanks Symphony Orchestra and Juneau Symphony are also notable. The Anchorage Opera is currently the state's only professional opera company, though there are several volunteer and semi-professional organizations in the state as well.

The official state song of Alaska is "Alaska's Flag", which was adopted in 1955; it celebrates the flag of Alaska.

Movies filmed in Alaska

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Alaska's first independent picture all made on place was in the silent years. The Chechahcos, was released in 1924 by the Alaska Moving Picture Corp. It was the only film the company made.

One of the most prominent movies filmed in Alaska is MGM's Academy Award winning classic Eskimo/Mala The Magnificent starring Alaska's own Ray Mala. In 1932 an expedition set out from MGM's studios in Hollywood to Alaska to film what was then billed as "The Biggest Picture Ever Made." Upon arriving in Alaska, they set up "Camp Hollywood" in Northwest Alaska, where they lived during the duration of the filming. Louis B. Mayer spared no expense in making sure they had everything they needed during their stay—he even sent the famous chef from the Hotel Roosevelt on Hollywood Blvd (the site of the first Oscars) with them to Alaska to cook for them. When Eskimo premiered at the famed Astor Theatre in Times Square, New York, the studio received the largest amount of feedback in the history of the studio up to that time. Eskimo was critically acclaimed and released worldwide; as a result Inupiat Eskimo actor Ray Mala became an international movie star. Eskimo is significant for the following: winning the very first Oscar for Best Film Editing at the Academy Awards, for forever preserving Inupiat culture on film, and for being the first motion picture to be filmed in an all native language (Inupiat).

The psychological thriller Insomnia, starring Al Pacino and Robin Williams was shot in Canada, but was set in Alaska. The 2007 horror feature 30 Days of Night is set in Barrow, Alaska but was filmed in New Zealand. Most films and television shows set in Alaska are not filmed there; for example, Northern Exposure, set in the fictional town of Cicely, Alaska, was actually filmed in Roslyn, Washington.

The 1983 Disney movie Never Cry Wolf was at least partially shot in Alaska. The 1991 film White Fang, starring Ethan Hawke, was filmed in and around Haines, Alaska. The 1999 John Sayles film Limbo, starring David Strathairn, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio and Kris Kristofferson, was filmed in Juneau.

The 2007 film directed by Sean Penn, Into The Wild was partially filmed and set in Alaska. The film, which is based on the novel of the same name, follows the adventures of Christopher McCandless, who died in a remote abandoned bus in Alaska in 1992.

State symbols

State Motto: North to the Future
Nicknames: "The Last Frontier" or "Land of the Midnight Sun" or "Seward's Icebox"
State bird: Willow Ptarmigan, adopted by the Territorial Legislature in 1955. It is a small (15–17 inches) Arctic grouse that lives among willows and on open tundra and muskeg. Plumage is brown in summer, changing to white in winter. The Willow Ptarmigan is common in much of Alaska.
State fish: King Salmon, adopted 1962.
State flower: wild/native Forget-Me-Not, adopted by the Territorial Legislature in 1917.^[72] It is a perennial that is found throughout Alaska, from Hyder to the Arctic Coast, and west to the Aleutians.
State fossil: Woolly Mammoth, adopted 1986.
State gem: Jade, adopted 1968.
State insect: Four-spot skimmer dragonfly, adopted 1995.
State land mammal: Moose, adopted 1998.
State marine mammal: Bowhead Whale, adopted 1983.
State mineral: Gold, adopted 1968.
State song: "Alaska's Flag"
State sport: Dog Mushing, adopted 1972.
State tree: Sitka Spruce, adopted 1962.
State soil: Estelle, adopted unknown.

Notable residents

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36 Crazyfists, metalcore band from Kenai
Marty Beckerman, author^[73]
Irene Bedard, actress
Benny Benson, designer of the flag of Alaska
Tom Bodett, author and voice actor
Carlos Boozer, professional basketball player
Susan Butcher, noted dog musher, four-time Iditarod winner
Craig Campbell, current Lieutenant Governor of Alaska
Mario Chalmers, professional basketball player
Matt Carle, professional ice hockey player
Chad Carpenter, cartoonist and creator of the comic strip Tundra
Daryn Colledge, professional football player for the Green Bay Packers
Ty Conklin, professional ice hockey player
Brandon Dubinsky, professional ice hockey player
William Allen Egan, the first Governor of Alaska
Erik Ellington, professional skateboarder
Scott Gomez, professional ice hockey player
Mike Gravel, former U.S. Senator
Ernest Gruening, former U.S. Senator, journalist
Jay Hammond, former Governor of Alaska
Walter Hickel, former two time Governor and Secretary of the Interior under President Richard Nixon
Jewel, singer/songwriter
Joe Juneau, Canadian-born prospector who co-founded the city of Juneau, Alaska
Tony Knowles, former Governor of Alaska
Trajan Langdon, professional basketball player
Sydney Laurence, noted landscape painter
Hilary Lindh, alpine ski racer
Ray Mala, actor
Lance Mackey, four time Yukon Quest and three time Iditarod winner
Holly Madison, model and television personality
Tommy Moe, won a gold medal at the 1994 Winter Olympics at Lillehammer, Norway
Kelly Moneymaker, singer
Margaret Murie, the Grandmother of the Conservation Movement
Frank Murkowski, former United States Senator from Alaska and former Governor of Alaska
Sarah Palin, 2008 Republican Vice Presidential nominee, former Governor of Alaska
Sean Parnell, former Lieutenant Governor of Alaska, current Governor of Alaska
Elizabeth Peratrovich, civil rights activist
Sean Rash, Professional Tenpin Bowler
Libby Riddles, noted dog musher, first woman to win Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race
Curt Schilling, professional baseball player
Don Simpson, noted film producer
Soapy Smith, con artist and gangster
Nate Thompson, professional ice hockey player
Khleo Thomas, Actor/Rapper
Paul Varelans, UFC fighter
Mr. Whitekeys, writer, musician, commentator, and satirist
Dave Williams, professional baseball player

References

This article includes a list of references or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it has insufficient inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations where appropriate. (February 2009)

^ CompuServe.com
^ RCN - Digital Cable TV, High-Speed Internet Service & Phone in Boston, Chicago, New York City, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C. and the Lehigh Valley.
^ ^a ^b ^c "Census Bureau Annual Estimates of the Resident Population for the United States, Regions, States, and Puerto Rico: April 1, 2000 to July 1, 2008". United States Census Bureau. http://www.census.gov/popest/states/tables/NST-EST2008-01.csv Census Bureau. Retrieved 2009-02-06.
^ ^a ^b "Elevations and Distances in the United States". U.S Geological Survey. April 29, 2005. http://erg.usgs.gov/isb/pubs/booklets/elvadist/elvadist.html#Highest. Retrieved 2006-11-03.
^ Census Bureau
^ Ransom, J. Ellis. 1940. Derivation of the Word ‘Alaska’. American Anthropologist n.s., 42: pp. 550–551
^ Benson, Carl (1998-09-02). "Alaska's Size in Perspective". Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks. http://www.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF14/1404.html. Retrieved 2007-11-19.
^ The other three exclaves of the United States are the Northwest Angle of Minnesota, Point Roberts, Washington and Alburgh, Vermont.
^ Alaska.com
^ Decker, Robert; Decker, Barbara (2001). Volcanoes In America's National Parks. New York: WW Norton & Company Inc.. p. 115. ISBN 9622176771.
^ Porco, Peter (June 23, 2003). "Long said to be second to Fundy, city tides aren't even close". Anchorage Daily News: A1.
^ "Alaska Hydrology Survey". Division of Mining, Land, and Water; Alaska Department of Natural Resources. http://www.dnr.state.ak.us/mlw/water/hydro/.
^ Alaska Facts
^ Western States Data Public Land Acreage
^ ^a ^b Mean Annual Precipitation in Alaska-Yukon. Oregon Climate Service at Oregon State University. Last accessed October 23, 2006.
^ ^a ^b "NOAA Weather Radio All Hazards Information — Alaska Weather Interesting Facts and Records" (PDF). National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. http://www.arh.noaa.gov/docs/AKWXfacts.pdf. Retrieved 2007-01-03.
^ ^a ^b "State Extremes". Western Regional Climate Center, Desert Research Institute. http://www.wrcc.dri.edu/htmlfiles/state.extremes.html. Retrieved 2007-01-03.
^ "NOAA - National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration SD Weather History and Trivia for May: May 1". National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. http://www.crh.noaa.gov/fsd/?n=fsdtrivia05 NOAA - National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Retrieved 2007-01-03.
^ "University of Alaska FAQ ALASKA — Frequently Asked Questions About Alaska: Weather". Statewide Library Electronic Doorway, University of Alaska Fairbanks. 2005-01-17. http://sled.alaska.edu/akfaq/aksuper.html#wea University of Alaska. Retrieved 2007-01-03.
^ Ned Rozell (2003-01-23). "The Coldest Place in North America". Geophysical Institute of the University of Alaska Fairbanks. http://www.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF16/1630.html. Retrieved 2007-01-03.
^ History for Barrow, Alaska. Monthly Summary for July 2006. Weather Underground. Last accessed October 23, 2006.
^ these three Aleutian outer islands are about 460 miles (740 km) away from continental USSR, 920 miles (1,480 km) from continental Alaska (U.S.), 950 miles (1,530 km) from Japan.
^ ^a ^b ^c U. S. Census Bureau (2008-12-15). "Cumulative Estimates of the Components of Population Change for the United States, Regions and States: April 1, 2000 to July 1, 2008 (NST-EST2008-04)" (CSV). http://www.census.gov/popest/states/tables/NST-EST2008-04.csv. Retrieved 2009-01-16.
^ Census Bureau
^ Census Bureau
^ Census Bureau
^ Census Bureau
^ Census Bureau
^ Census Bureau
^ Adherents.com
^ "Believe it or not, Alaska's one of nation's least religious states" Anchorage Daily News, 2008 July 13.
^ "Religious Affiliations 2000". Alaska State Membership Report. Association of Religion Data Archives. http://www.thearda.com/mapsReports/reports/state/02_2000.asp. Retrieved 2008-03-31.
^ Religious legacy lives on in Alaska, BBC News
^ Welcome to SLED: FAQ Alaska
^ An early Russian Orthodox Church
^ Association of Religion Data Archive
^ 76 - Christian Church Adherents, 2000, and Jewish Population, 2004 - States [Excel 27k]
^ First Muslim cemetery opens in Alaska
^ Engaging Muslim: Religion, Culture, Politics
^ Alaskan Muslims Avoid Conflict
^ Shri Ganesha Mandir of Alaska
^ Hindu Temples in USA - Hindu Mandirs in USA
^ Holi & Baisakhi celebrated by Alaskan Hindus and Sikhs
^ Craft Brewing Industry Statistics
^ Gas Hydrates on Alaska's North Slope.
^ "EIA State Energy Profiles: Alaska". 2008-06-12. http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/state/state_energy_profiles.cfm?sid=AK. Retrieved 2008-06-24.
^ Screening Report for Alaska Rural Energy Plan, April, 2001
^ Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation
^ State of Alaska Permanent Fund Division
^ Iglooalaska.com for examples of companies offering free shipping to Alaska
^ completion of the 3.5 mile (5.6 km) Interstate 93 tunnel as part of the "Big Dig" project in Boston, Massachusetts.
^ State of Alaska Office of Economic Development. Alaska Visitor Arrivals and Profile-Summer 2001. November, 2002; retrieved September 11, 2006.
^ State of Alaska Office of Economic Development. Alaska Visitor Arrivals and Profile-Fall/Winter 2001. November, 2002; retrieved September 11, 2006.
^ Federal Aviation Administration. 2005 U.S. Civil Airman Statistics
^ Norman Vaughan Serum Run
^ State of Alaska
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d About the Alaska Court System
^ National Journal Alaska State Profile
^ Volz, Matt (2006-07-11). ""Judge rules against Alaska marijuana law"". The Seattle Times. Frank A. Blethen. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003118645_webpot10.html. Retrieved 2008-05-22.
^ Doughtery, J. (2001, February 25). Alaska party stumps for independence. World Net Daily. Retrieved from A Free Press for a Free People
^ CNN Money (2005). "How tax friendly is your state?" Retrieved from CNN website.
^ Department of Revenue Tax Division
^ The Tax Foundation - Educating Taxpayers Since 1937
^ State of Alaska
^ Alaska ICE
^ These are the only three universities in the state ranked by US News and World Report.[1]
^ "UA Scholars Program - Frequently Asked Questions". Archived from the original on 2008-03-09. http://web.archive.org/web/20080309023826/http://www.alaska.edu/scholars/faq.xml. Retrieved 2009-12-28.
^ AK Dept. of Public Safety Alcoholic Beverage Control Board
^ State of Alaska
^ Alaska State Troopers FY 2008 Byrne Grant Application
^ www.alaskanativearts.org
^ Alaska Conservation Foundation - State Symbols
^ Marty Beckerman | America's Luscious Beacon of Truth

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Coordinates: 64°N 153°W / 64°N 153°W / 64; -153

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Translations: Alaska

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Dansk (Danish)
n. - Alaska

Français (French)
n. - Alaska

Deutsch (German)
n. - Alaska

Português (Portuguese)
n. - Alasca

Español (Spanish)
n. - Alaska

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
阿拉斯加州

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 阿拉斯加州

한국어 (Korean)
알래스카 (미국의 한 주; 주도 Juneau; (약) Alas.; AK; 속칭 The Last Frontier, Land of the Midnight Sun, Great Land, Mainland State)

idioms:

Gulf of alaska 알라스카 만

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮אלאסקה‬

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Shopping: Alaska

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alaska	university of alaska
alaska flex	Alaska Garlic Gel

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		Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2007. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more
		Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more
		US History Encyclopedia. © 2006 through a partnership of Answers Corporation. All rights reserved. Read more
		Russian History Encyclopedia. Encyclopedia of Russian History. Copyright © 2004 by The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more
		Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/. Read more
		Geography. The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition Edited by E.D. Hirsch, Jr., Joseph F. Kett, and James Trefil. Copyright © 2002 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin. All rights reserved. Read more
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		Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Alaska". Read more
		Translations. Copyright © 2007, WizCom Technologies Ltd. All rights reserved. Read more

	Bering, Vitus Jonassen
	Dezhnev, Semen Ivanovich
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Alaska

Contents

Geography

Natural features

Land ownership

Climate

History

Demographics

Race and ancestry

Languages

Religion

Economy

Energy

Permanent Fund

Cost of living

Agriculture

Transportation

Roads

Rail

Marine transport

Air transport

Other transport

Law and government

State government

State politics

Taxes

Federal politics

Cities, towns and boroughs

Education

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Culture

Libraries

Music

Movies filmed in Alaska

State symbols

Notable residents

See also

References

External links