Alaska

Alaska is so large it bends the scale of the country — at 665,384 square miles (1,723,337 km²) it is bigger than Texas, California, and Montana combined, yet home to fewer than 740,000 people. It hangs off the far northwest corner of the continent, separated from the rest of the United States by Canada, with a panhandle of drowned coastline in the southeast and a sweep of tundra reaching above the Arctic Circle. Glaciers, fjords, and active volcanoes crowd a coastline longer than that of all other states put together.

The land is a catalogue of superlatives. Denali, the highest peak in North America at 20,310 feet (6,190 m), anchors the Alaska Range across the state's center. The Yukon River threads more than 1,900 miles toward the Bering Sea, and the Aleutian Islands arc out toward Asia along the volcanic Ring of Fire. Much of the interior is permafrost — much of the south is temperate rainforest. Daylight itself swings to extremes — months of near-constant summer light, matched by long polar winters.

Alaska was purchased from Russia in 1867 and became the 49th state in 1959. Most residents cluster around Anchorage and the south-central coast, leaving vast stretches roadless and reachable only by bush plane or boat. Oil from the North Slope, salmon from its rivers, and a steady draw of wilderness tourism drive an economy built on the state's sheer natural scale.