98 Fun Facts About Alaska

Alaska is bigger than the next three largest states combined: Texas, California and which other?

Montana is the fourth-largest state at about 147,000 square miles; Texas, California and Montana together total roughly 579,000 square miles, well short of Alaska's 663,268.

What is the capital city of Alaska?

The capital moved there from Sitka in 1906; it is the only U.S. state capital not reachable by road.

Which country sold Alaska to the United States in 1867?

Russia sold Alaska in a treaty negotiated by Secretary of State William Seward and signed on March 30, 1867; the formal transfer ceremony took place at Sitka on October 18, 1867.

What is the highest peak in North America, located in Alaska?

Denali (formerly known as Mount McKinley) stands at 20,310 feet and is the highest peak in North America. Its name comes from the Koyukon Athabaskan word meaning "the high one."

What sled dog race, held every March since 1973, covers roughly 1,000 miles across Alaska?

The Iditarod, first run in 1973, has a ceremonial start in downtown Anchorage on the first Saturday of March and then covers roughly 1,000 miles of the historic Iditarod Trail to the Bering Sea coast.

Which large marine mammal, often seen in Alaska's Inside Passage, is known for its breaching?

Humpback whales feed in Southeast Alaska each summer and are famous for launching their 30-ton bodies almost clear of the water; the same animals winter and breed off Hawaii.

In what year did Alaska officially become the 49th U.S. state?

1959: Alaska had been an organized territory since 1912, with home rule for its cities extremely limited until statehood took effect.

What is the largest city in Alaska by population?

Anchorage has about 290,000 residents, roughly 40 percent of Alaska's population; with the Matanuska-Susitna Borough its metro area holds more than half of all Alaskans.

The Trans-Alaska Pipeline carries North Slope crude to a marine terminal at which port?

The 800-mile Trans-Alaska Pipeline, completed in 1977 after three years and about $8 billion of construction, ends at the Valdez Marine Terminal, an ice-free port where tankers load the crude.

What phenomenon, caused by charged solar particles striking the atmosphere, lights Alaska's winter night sky?

The Northern Lights form when charged particles from the sun collide with gases high in the atmosphere; Fairbanks, sitting under the auroral oval, sees them on most clear winter nights.

Which Alaska national park is famous for brown bears catching salmon at Brooks Falls?

Katmai National Park is home to Brooks Falls, where dozens of brown bears congregate each summer to feast on sockeye salmon leaping upstream. The park's bear cams have become an internet sensation.

What derogatory nickname did critics give the 1867 purchase of Alaska?

Seward's Folly looked like a waste of money on frozen land until the gold rushes of the 1890s and the oil found in 1968 proved the critics spectacularly wrong.

Which Indigenous people, who call themselves Unangan, are native to the island chain stretching from Alaska toward Russia across the North Pacific?

Aleut is the outsiders' name, spread by Russian fur traders; the people call themselves Unangan or Unangas, both meaning 'people', and their homeland runs the length of the Aleutian chain.

During the summer solstice, approximately how many hours of daylight does Fairbanks, Alaska experience?

Fairbanks gets about 21 hours and 49 minutes of direct sunlight on the summer solstice, plus extended twilight that makes it never truly dark. Only locations above the Arctic Circle experience a full 24-hour midnight sun.

Which species is the largest Pacific salmon, prized by anglers on Alaska's Kenai River?

The Chinook, also called king salmon, is the largest Pacific salmon; the sport-caught world record, a 97-pound 4-ounce fish, was taken on the Kenai River in 1985.

What magnitude did the 1964 Great Alaska Earthquake reach?

The magnitude 9.2 quake struck at 5:36 pm on Good Friday, March 27, 1964, and shook for about four and a half minutes; it is the strongest earthquake ever recorded in North America.

Which Alaskan city hosted the start of the Klondike Gold Rush supply route and boomed in the late 1890s?

Skagway, at the foot of the White Pass trail, held an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 people by mid-1898, briefly Alaska's largest city, as about 1,000 stampeders a week passed through toward the Yukon.

Who designed Alaska's state flag, with the Big Dipper and North Star on dark blue?

Benny Benson, an Alaska Native living at a children's home, beat roughly 700 entries in a 1927 contest run by the American Legion for pupils in grades seven to twelve.

Which North Slope oil discovery of 1968 triggered construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline?

It is the largest oil field in North America and originally held some 25 billion barrels; Humble Oil and ARCO confirmed it with the Prudhoe Bay State #1 well.

Which 21-mile tidewater glacier, rising on Mount Root, is among the most visited sights on Alaska cruises?

Margerie Glacier flows 21 miles from Mount Root to the head of Glacier Bay, where its 250-foot face calves into Tarr Inlet; unlike most of the bay's glaciers it has stayed roughly stable for decades.

What is the primary material of traditional Tlingit totem poles?

Western red cedar (Thuja plicata) is the traditional wood: its straight, rot-resistant trunks can be carved in one piece, though even cedar poles eventually decay in the wet coastal climate.

What treeless Arctic biome with permafrost covers much of northern Alaska?

Tundra, treeless ground over permanently frozen soil, covers Alaska's North Slope; the word reached English through Russian, and thawing permafrost releases methane and carbon dioxide from ancient plant matter.

Which Alaskan volcano erupted in 1912, creating the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes?

Novarupta's June 1912 eruption, the largest of the 20th century, buried 40 square miles up to 700 feet deep in ash; Katmai was made a national monument in 1918 to protect the valley.

What is Alaska's yearly payment to residents from its invested oil royalties called?

The Permanent Fund Dividend, paid every year since 1982, comes from the investment earnings of the Alaska Permanent Fund, set up in 1976 to invest oil royalty revenues; payments have ranged from about $300 to over $2,000.

What is the largest US National Park Service area, an Alaskan expanse about the size of Croatia?

Wrangell-St. Elias covers 13.2 million acres, about six Yellowstones, and holds Malaspina Glacier, the largest piedmont glacier in North America, and Mount Blackburn, the highest of the Wrangell Mountains at 16,390 feet.

Which lead sled dog finished the 1925 serum run and got a statue in Central Park?

Balto led Gunnar Kaasen's team on the final leg of the 1925 diphtheria serum relay, and his Central Park statue was unveiled that December; many mushers argue Togo, who ran the longest and most dangerous stretch, deserved more credit.

In which Alaskan body of water did the Exxon Valdez run aground in 1989?

On March 24, 1989, the Exxon Valdez struck Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound, spilling 11 million gallons of crude oil. The spill eventually covered 1,300 miles of coastline and killed hundreds of thousands of seabirds, otters and seals.

Approximately how much did the United States pay Russia for Alaska in 1867?

The U.S. paid $7.2 million, about two cents an acre, for 586,412 square miles; the Senate ratified the treaty in April 1867 and the House voted the money in July 1868.

Approximately how many miles of tidal shoreline does Alaska have?

Alaska has about 34,000 miles of tidal shoreline, more than a third of the U.S. total, thanks to its deeply indented coast, thousands of islands and the long Aleutian arc; its general coastline alone runs 6,640 miles.

Which highly complex Alaska Native language family includes Tlingit?

Na-Dene groups Tlingit with Eyak and the Athabaskan languages; Edward Sapir proposed the link in 1915, and after decades of debate scholars placed Tlingit as a separate branch alongside Eyak-Athabaskan.

What is the northernmost spot in the United States, a headland on Alaska's Arctic coast?

Point Barrow, at 71.4°N, marks the meeting of the Chukchi and Beaufort seas; Frederick Beechey named it in 1826 for Admiralty secretary Sir John Barrow, and its Inupiat name is Nuvuk.

The Mendenhall Glacier, one of Alaska's most visited, lies roughly how many miles from downtown Juneau?

Mendenhall Glacier ends about 12 miles from downtown Juneau, a short bus ride from the cruise docks; its Tlingit name is Aak'w T'aak Sit', and researchers have monitored it since 1942.

Which Alaskan was the longest-serving Republican U.S. senator in history when he left office in 2009?

Ted Stevens served 40 years, from a 1968 appointment to a vacant seat until January 2009; he survived a 1978 Learjet crash at Anchorage's airport that killed his wife Ann.

McNeil River State Game Sanctuary protects the world's highest concentration of which animal?

McNeil River draws brown bears to its falls each July to catch chum salmon; as many as 74 have been counted at once, and with no road within 100 miles visitors arrive by boat or floatplane.

Which Fairbanks competition draws carvers from around the world each February and March?

The World Ice Art Championships run in Fairbanks each February and March; carvers work blocks cut from local ponds, and temperatures often below -20°F keep the sculptures intact for weeks.

What were the elaborate ceremonial masks of western Alaska's Yupik traditionally carved from?

Yupik masks were carved from driftwood, the main timber on the treeless Bering Sea coast; boys learned the craft in the qasgiq, the men's communal house, and masks were often discarded after the ceremony.

Which arm of Cook Inlet has one of the world's largest tides, with a range of more than 35 feet?

Turnagain Arm's tides reach about 40 feet, second in North America only to the Bay of Fundy, and produce a surfable bore tide; in the 1964 quake land at its head sank up to eight feet.

Which is the largest of its kind in North America, a body of ice covering just over 2,000 square miles?

Bering Glacier, together with the Bagley Icefield that feeds it, covers just over 2,000 square miles east of Cordova, the largest glacier in North America; its tongue ends in Vitus Lake near the Gulf of Alaska.

In 1978 the trail followed by Alaska's great sled dog race became one of the first four of what?

The trail was designated one of the first four National Historic Trails in 1978, alongside the Oregon, Mormon Pioneer and Lewis and Clark trails; dog teams once hauled mail and ore along it between October and June.

What is the traditional Inuit dwelling made of compacted snow blocks?

The igloo (iglu in Inuktitut, meaning 'house') is a dome built from blocks of packed snow. Though associated with all Inuit, snow igloos were mainly used by Central and Eastern Canadian Inuit; Alaska's Inupiat favoured sod houses.

Which huge protected area in northeastern Alaska has seen decades of debate over drilling on its coastal plain?

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge covers about 19.3 million acres; the fight centres on the 1002 Area of its coastal plain, calving ground of the Porcupine caribou herd, which Congress opened to leasing in 2017.

Which Seward Peninsula town boomed after the 'Three Lucky Swedes' struck gold nearby in 1898?

Nome sprang up after the 'Three Lucky Swedes' found gold on Anvil Creek in September 1898; gold in the beach sands, found the next summer, drew some 20,000 people by 1900.

What is the lowest temperature ever recorded in Alaska, set at Prospect Creek in January 1971?

Prospect Creek, a pipeline construction camp north of Fairbanks, hit -80°F (-62°C) on January 23, 1971, the coldest temperature ever recorded in the United States.

The Chilkat preserve, with the world's most bald eagles, is near which Alaskan town?

Two to four hundred birds live there year-round, and up to 4,000 gather for the autumn congregation along the river.

Which 1896 Russian Orthodox church in Unalaska is among the oldest in Alaska?

Holy Ascension Cathedral, finished in 1896, probably stands on the site of the 1826 church Ioann Veniaminov built and reused some of its timbers and an iconostasis; a Russian post existed at Unalaska by 1778.

Who became the first musher to win Alaska's 1,000-mile sled dog race six times, in 2024?

Dallas Seavey took his sixth win in 2024, passing Rick Swenson's five, a record that had stood since 1991; his father Mitch set the race's fastest time, 8 days 3 hours, in 2017.

What geographic oddity does the western end of the Aleutian chain hold?

That is why Alaska counts as the westernmost and, by longitude, the easternmost state; the date line was bent west of 180° to keep the whole continent on one legal day.

What was Sitka's Russian name when Alaska was formally handed to the United States?

Sitka was Novo-Arkhangelsk, New Archangel, the capital of Russian America; at the transfer on Castle Hill on October 18, 1867, about 250 U.S. soldiers stood by as Russian troops lowered their flag.

The name Alaska comes from an Aleut idiom, alaxsxaq, meaning what?

Alaxsxaq means 'the mainland', or more literally 'the object towards which the action of the sea is directed'; Russians first applied the name to the Alaska Peninsula before it spread to the whole territory.

What does Alaska, which has no counties, call its local government divisions?

Boroughs, 19 of them, cover the organized parts of Alaska; the vast remainder is the Unorganized Borough, run directly by the state.

Which Southeast Alaska fishing town celebrates its Scandinavian roots as 'Little Norway'?

Petersburg, on Mitkof Island, grew up around the cannery Norwegian immigrant Peter Buschmann built in the 1890s; its Little Norway Festival each May marks Norwegian Constitution Day.

The Anton Anderson Memorial Tunnel links which isolated Prince William Sound community to the Seward Highway?

At 2.5 miles it is shared by road traffic and the Alaska Railroad, and was North America's longest road tunnel until 2007.

What is the world's busiest seaplane base, located next to Anchorage's international airport?

Lake Hood, beside Anchorage's international airport, handles around 190 floatplane flights a day in summer, more than any other seaplane base in the world; a gravel strip serves wheeled planes too.

Which other state, besides Alaska, levies neither a sales tax nor an individual income tax?

New Hampshire is the other; Alaska's petroleum revenues and federal money fund the state and give Alaskans the lowest individual tax burden in the country.

What is the official state song, adopted in 1955, of the 49th state?

It celebrates the flag with its Big Dipper and North Star, designed by a schoolboy.

Which Alaskan river draws the world's largest springtime gathering of bald eagles?

The Stikine River delta near Wrangell draws more than 1,500 bald eagles each April and May to feed on spawning hooligan (eulachon), the largest spring gathering of the species anywhere.

What is Akutaq, a traditional Native food sometimes called 'Eskimo ice cream', made from?

Reindeer fat, seal oil, dried fish and berries go into Akutaq, and subsistence hunting for caribou, moose and Dall sheep remains common in remote Bush communities.

Which Southeast Alaska city bills itself the 'Salmon Capital of the World'?

Ketchikan's welcome arch proclaims it the Salmon Capital of the World; all five Pacific salmon species run in nearby waters, and Creek Street, a boardwalk over Ketchikan Creek, fills with spawning fish each summer.

Alaska's farms are concentrated on the Kenai Peninsula and in which area northeast of Anchorage?

The Matanuska Valley around Palmer, settled by the 1935 Matanuska Colony farmers, has a short but sunny 100-day growing season; potatoes, carrots, lettuce and cabbage are the main crops, and peonies are a rising export.

Who became Alaska's first female governor in 2006, two years before a vice-presidential run?

Sarah Palin, elected in 2006 at 42, was both Alaska's first woman and its youngest governor; she resigned in July 2009, citing the legal bills from a string of ethics complaints.

Which Alaskan town near Fairbanks has a Kris Kringle Drive and candy-cane streetlights?

North Pole, a small city about 14 miles southeast of Fairbanks, receives hundreds of thousands of letters to Santa each year at ZIP code 99705; its streetlights are painted like candy canes.

Which singer-songwriter grew up yodeling with her father on a homestead near Homer?

Jewel Kilcher grew up on her family's homestead outside Homer and sang with her father Atz in local bars; a Homer auction raised $11,000 toward her first year at Interlochen Arts Academy.

Talkeetna's honorary mayor from 1997 to 2017 was what kind of creature?

Stubbs the cat held office at Nagley's General Store and drew 30 to 40 tourists a day; Talkeetna is an unincorporated historic district with no real mayor, so there was never an election to win.

Which breed was named Alaska's official state dog in 2010?

The Alaskan Malamute, a freighting breed developed by the Mahlemiut Inupiat, became state dog in 2010 after a campaign by Anchorage schoolchildren; the University of Washington's husky mascot is actually a malamute.

The crab boats of TV's Deadliest Catch sail from which Aleutian port?

Dutch Harbor sits on Amaknak Island within the city of Unalaska and has led all U.S. ports in fish landed by volume for more than two decades, mostly pollock and crab.

Which bloom is Alaska's official state flower?

The alpine forget-me-not (Myosotis alpestris) was adopted by the territorial legislature in 1917; the genus name means 'mouse's ear' in Greek, a nod to the shape of the leaves.

Which 1942 US Army road links Dawson Creek, British Columbia, with Delta Junction?

The Alaska Highway was pushed through in eight months by some 10,000 soldiers, about a third of them Black troops in segregated regiments; crews nicknamed it the 'oil can highway' for the drums left behind.

Which grouse, adopted in 1955, is Alaska's state bird?

The willow ptarmigan turns pure white in winter and feeds mostly on willow buds and twigs; after heavy snow it can reach only the tallest shrubs, which shapes how the tundra grows.

Which bay in southwest Alaska hosts the world's largest sockeye salmon fishery?

Bristol Bay's rivers return tens of millions of sockeye each summer, the largest run in the world; fishing supplies most local jobs, which is why the proposed Pebble Mine upstream was so fiercely fought.

Which Alaskan island is the second-largest island in the United States?

Kodiak Island covers 3,588 square miles, slightly more than Cyprus, and is second only to Hawaii's Big Island among U.S. islands; nearly two-thirds of it lies in a roadless national wildlife refuge.

Which president signed the Alaska Statehood Act in July 1958?

Dwight Eisenhower signed the Alaska Statehood Act on July 7, 1958; James Wickersham had introduced the first statehood bill in 1916, and Southern Democrats stalled later versions, fearing two new pro-civil-rights senators.

What name did the city of Barrow officially adopt in December 2016?

Residents narrowly approved the Iñupiaq name Utqiaġvik by referendum in October 2016; the old name honoured Sir John Barrow of the British Admiralty, for whom explorer Frederick Beechey named the nearby point in 1826.

Which 414-mile road runs from north of Fairbanks to Deadhorse on the Arctic coast?

The Dalton Highway was built in 1974 as the haul road for the Trans-Alaska Pipeline; the public could drive only as far as Disaster Creek, mile 211, until the whole route opened in 1994.

Into which body of water does the 1,980-mile Yukon River, Alaska's longest, empty?

The Yukon rises at the Llewellyn Glacier in British Columbia and empties into the Bering Sea through a vast delta near Emmonak; sternwheelers worked it until the Klondike Highway was finished in the 1950s.

What state motto did Alaska adopt in 1967 after a 1963 contest drew 761 entries?

Juneau journalist Richard Peter won the $300 prize; the slogan was meant to capture the state's character for the centennial celebrations.

Anchorage began in 1915 as a tent city at the mouth of Ship Creek during construction of what?

Anchorage was the construction headquarters for the Alaska Railroad; Congress had voted in 1914 to build the Seward-to-Fairbanks line, and President Harding drove the golden spike at Nenana in 1923.

In 2020 the Army National Guard airlifted which famous object out of the Alaska bush?

Fairbanks Bus 142 was where Christopher McCandless died in 1992; at least two pilgrims drowned trying to reach it, and it now sits at the Museum of the North.

Who in 2022 became the first Alaska Native elected to Congress?

Mary Peltola, a Yup'ik former tribal judge from Bethel, won the August 2022 special election after Don Young's death, the first contest run under the state's new ranked-choice voting system.

In 2010 Lisa Murkowski became only the second US Senate candidate ever to win how?

She had lost the Republican primary to Joe Miller; the only previous write-in winner was Strom Thurmond in 1954.

The Yukon Quest sled dog race traditionally ran 1,000 miles between Fairbanks and which Canadian city?

The Yukon Quest ran between Fairbanks and Whitehorse, alternating direction each year, from 1984 until it split into separate Alaska and Yukon events in 2022; its February start made it colder and darker than the March race.

Operation Breakthrough, dramatized in the 2012 film Big Miracle, rescued which animals in 1988?

Three gray whales were trapped by sea ice near Barrow in October 1988; after two weeks, and the death of the youngest, Soviet icebreakers cut a path that let the two survivors reach open water.

A 1958 rockslide into Lituya Bay produced a wave that stripped trees to roughly what height?

The wave stripped trees to 1,720 feet on the slope opposite the slide, the highest runup ever recorded; fisherman Howard Ulrich and his seven-year-old son rode it out in their boat and survived.

Canada's Mounties let Klondike stampeders over the Chilkoot Pass only if they carried how much gear?

The Mounties demanded about one ton of supplies, reckoned a year's worth, so each prospector climbed the 'Golden Stairs' dozens of times; the trail died in 1899 when a railway opened over the rival White Pass.

The Hurricane Turn train near Talkeetna is one of the last in the US of what type?

The Hurricane Turn is a flag-stop train: residents of the roadless stretch between Talkeetna and Hurricane Gulch simply wave a white cloth from the trackside to board, and it is their lifeline for groceries and supplies.

In 1989 a KLM 747 lost all four engines near Anchorage after flying into ash from which volcano?

Mount Redoubt's December 1989 eruption sent ash into the path of KLM Flight 867; the crew fell more than 14,000 feet before restarting the engines, and the glassy ash coating inside them cost over $80 million to repair.

Russia's Big Diomede, 2.4 miles from Alaska's Little Diomede, is nicknamed what?

Big Diomede is 'Tomorrow Island' and Little Diomede 'Yesterday Island': they sit on opposite sides of the International Date Line, so their clocks are 21 hours apart despite the 2.4-mile gap.

Which 18,008-foot peak on the Yukon border is the second-highest in both the US and Canada?

Mount Saint Elias rises its full 18,008 feet in just 10 horizontal miles from the sea at Icy Bay, one of the greatest vertical reliefs of any mountain on Earth; the summit straddles the Alaska-Yukon border.

Alaska's 1945 Anti-Discrimination Act, the first in the US, is credited to which Tlingit activist?

Elizabeth Peratrovich's testimony before the territorial Senate in 1945 is credited with passing the act; February 16 is Elizabeth Peratrovich Day in Alaska, and in 2020 the U.S. Mint put her likeness on a $1 coin.

TV's Northern Exposure, set in Cicely, Alaska, was mostly shot in which Washington town?

Roslyn, an old coal town in the Cascades, stood in for Cicely; Mort, the moose in the opening titles, came from a captive herd at Washington State University and was lured around the fenced-off town with food.

Who served as the first governor of Russian America, from 1799 to 1818?

Alexander Baranov ran the Russian-American Company's colonies from 1799 to 1818, founding the settlements at Kodiak and Sitka; he had left home at 15 and married his Alutiiq partner after learning his Russian wife had died.

Admiralty Island's Tlingit name, meaning 'Fortress of the Bears', gave English which slang word?

Xootsnoowú, 'Fortress of the Bears', became Hoochinoo, the name of a Tlingit village whose home-distilled liquor gave English 'hooch'; about 1,600 brown bears live on the island, roughly one per square mile.

Muskoxen, wiped out in Alaska by the early 1900s, were reintroduced in 1935 to which island?

Animals from that herd later seeded populations as far away as Russia's Wrangel Island and Taymyr Peninsula.

Why did Alaska's 1955 constitutional convention seat exactly 55 delegates?

They met in a brand-new student union at the University of Alaska, promptly renamed Constitution Hall; Frank Peratrovich of Klawock was the only Alaska Native delegate.

Under which governor was Alaska's oil-funded Permanent Fund created by a 1976 amendment?

Jay Hammond, governor from 1974 to 1982, championed the 1976 amendment that sets aside at least a quarter of oil royalties for future generations; the fund had grown to roughly $64 billion by 2019.

Hyder, Alaska can be reached by road only from which Canadian town?

Stewart, British Columbia, sits two miles from Hyder at the head of the Portland Canal fjord; Hyder even uses British Columbia's telephone area codes instead of Alaska's 907.

Kake's giant totem pole, one of the world's tallest, was carved to mark what occasion?

The pole was carved by Tlingit artists for the 1967 centennial of the Alaska Purchase; the village of about 540 people sits on Kupreanof Island and first appeared in the 1880 census as Keex Kwaan.

In 1983 most of Alaska moved onto a single zone previously known by what name?

The UTC-9 zone, then called Yukon Time, became Alaska Time when most of the state moved onto it in October 1983; before that Alaska straddled four zones, from Pacific Time in the Panhandle to Bering Time in the Aleutians.

Juneau's mining camp was first called Harrisburg and then, briefly, what?

Harrisburg was renamed Rockwell for Navy Lt. Commander Charles Rockwell in early 1881; that December a miners' meeting of 72 settled on Juneau, the first European-American town founded after the purchase from Russia.