Alaska

People have inhabited Alaska since 10,000 BCE; migrants crossed a land bridge from Siberia, following animal herds into eastern Alaska. Indigenous groups that remain in Alaska include the Athabaskans, the Unangan (Aleuts), the Inuit, the Yupiit (Yupik), the Tlingit and the Haida.⁠[1]

The State of Alaska recognizes 20 Indigenous languages, among them Deg Xinag.⁠[2]

In 1728 an expedition commissioned by Tsar Peter I and led by the Danish mariner Vitus Bering established that the land to the east was not connected to the Russian mainland, though fog kept it from locating North America. On Bering’s second voyage, in 1741, the peak of Mount St. Elias was sighted and men went ashore; the sea otter furs brought back to Russia began a fur trade that lasted through the following century.⁠[1]

The first European settlement was founded in 1784 at Three Saints Bay, near present-day Kodiak. Many Unangan were killed or overworked, and many more died of diseases brought by the Russians.⁠[1]

The Russian-American Company was organized in 1799 under a charter from Paul I. Its chief manager, Aleksandr Baranov, saw his first settlement at Old Harbor destroyed by the Tlingit; his second, founded in 1804 at Novo-Arkhangelsk (“New Archangel,” now Sitka), survived after the battle of Sitka, the only major armed conflict between Alaska Natives and Europeans. Kodiak was the capital until 1806, when the company moved its headquarters to Sitka.⁠[1]

In 1824 Russia signed treaties with the United States and Great Britain that set trade boundaries. The Russian-American Company governed Alaska until the 1867 sale. Permanent Russian settlers in Alaska never numbered more than 400.⁠[1][3]

Russia had offered to sell Alaska in 1859, but the U.S. Civil War delayed the sale; defeat in the Crimean War (1853–1856) and the near extinction of the sea otter also reduced Russian interest. On March 30, 1867, Secretary of State William H. Seward agreed to a proposal from the Russian minister Edouard de Stoeckl to buy Alaska for $7.2 million. The Senate approved the treaty on April 9, and President Andrew Johnson signed it on May 28. Critics called the purchase “Seward’s Folly.”⁠[3][1]

Alaska was formally transferred to the United States on October 18, 1867, when the American flag was raised at Sitka; the date is now observed as Alaska Day. Military commanders governed the territory for the War Department until 1877, and for about three decades it was ruled by the military, the Navy or the Treasury, and at times by no visible authority.⁠[3][1][4]

In 1878 a salmon cannery opened in Alaska, the start of what became the world’s largest salmon industry.⁠[1]

Gold was found on the Stikine River in 1861, at Juneau in 1880 and on Fortymile Creek in 1886. A major gold discovery in the Yukon in 1896 made Alaska the gateway to the Klondike gold fields, and the 1897–1900 stampede to the Klondike and Atlin goldfields in Canada created Skagway and Dyea. Gold was then found at Nome in 1898 and at Fairbanks in 1903, and copper at McCarthy in 1898.⁠[1][3]

In 1884 a civil government was established in Alaska so that U.S. mining laws could be applied. Congress made Alaska a judicial land district with federal district courts and started a school system, and the district was governed under the laws of OregonOregonOregon (officially the State of Oregon) is a state on the Pacific coast of the western United States; its capital is Salem and its largest city is Portland. It was admitted to the Union on February 14, 1859, as the 33rd state. Its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 4,237,256.Open the full entry.⁠[3][1][4]

In 1903 the Alaska Boundary Tribunal settled the boundary dispute with Canada, and boundary mapping was largely complete by 1913. In 1906 Alaska elected its first representative to Congress, a nonvoting delegate.⁠[1]

Novarupta Volcano erupted in 1912, which the state describes as the most violent volcanic event of the century; the eruption created the “Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes,” now part of Katmai National Park.⁠[2]

The Second Organic Act, signed by President William Howard Taft on August 24, 1912, made Alaska an incorporated territory: Congress created the Territory of Alaska with an elected legislature.⁠[4][1]

In 1923 the Alaska Railroad, about 500 miles (800 km) long, linked Seward, Anchorage and Fairbanks.⁠[1]

The Alaska flag was the winning entry in a 1927 contest sponsored by the American Legion, designed by John Bell (Benny) Benson, a 13-year-old orphaned Aleut, and formally adopted in May 1927. Its blue field represents the sky and the forget-me-not, the state flower, and its eight gold stars form the Big Dipper, a symbol of strength, and the North Star, representing Alaska’s future as the northernmost state.⁠[5][6]

In 1935 the federal government began a farming program in the Matanuska valley near Anchorage.⁠[1]

In 1942 Japanese forces invaded Agattu, Attu and Kiska in the Aleutians and bombed Dutch Harbor on Unalaska; U.S. and Canadian forces recaptured the islands in the summer of 1943. The war led to the building of large airfields and of the Alaska Highway, more than 1,500 miles (2,400 km) long, linking Dawson Creek, British Columbia, with Fairbanks.⁠[1][4]

The U.S. Army removed most Unangan from the Aleutians and sent them to work or to internment camps, where disease, especially influenza and tuberculosis, killed many of them.⁠[1]

A constitutional convention met from November 1955 to January 1956 and adopted the state constitution on February 5, 1956; voters ratified it on April 24, 1956, by 17,447 to 7,180.⁠[4][7]

The discovery of oil on the Kenai Peninsula in 1957 began the oil and gas industry that became Alaska’s chief industry.⁠[4]

President Dwight D. Eisenhower supported Alaska statehood early on but first wanted national-security concerns during the Cold War resolved, along with the fact that about 99% of the territory was federal land. H.R. 7999 passed the House on May 28, 1958, passed the Senate 64 to 20 on June 30, and was signed by the President on July 7, 1958 (72 Stat. 339). The statehood act provided for deeding to the new state, within 25 years, up to 103,350,000 acres, more than a quarter of its area.⁠[8][4][9]

On August 26, 1958, a majority of Alaska voters approved the three propositions required by section 8(b) of the statehood act, with statehood supported by a 5-to-1 margin; a general election held on November 25, 1958, chose the officers the act required.⁠[9][4]

At one minute past noon on January 3, 1959, President Eisenhower signed Proclamation 3269, declaring that the requirements of the statehood act had been met and that Alaska’s admission into the Union on an equal footing with the other states was accomplished; the state constitution became operative. Alaska was the first new state since New Mexico and ArizonaArizonaArizona is a state in the southwestern United States; its capital and largest city is Phoenix. Arizona was admitted to the Union on February 14, 1912, as the 48th state. Its population at the 2020 Census (April 1, 2020) was 7,151,502.Open the full entry achieved statehood in 1912.⁠[9][8][7][4]

On March 27, 1964, a moment magnitude 9.2 earthquake struck central Alaska, the strongest recorded in North America; it killed 131 people.⁠[2][4]

Large oil deposits were discovered at Prudhoe Bay on the North Slope in 1968.⁠[4][10]

President Richard Nixon signed the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) into law on December 18, 1971. It created 12 for-profit Alaska Native regional corporations and more than 200 village corporations, transferred 44 million acres of federal land to them, and cleared the way for building the 800-mile Trans-Alaska Pipeline.⁠[11]

The act also awarded Alaska Natives nearly $1 billion.⁠[4]

On November 2, 1976, voters approved a constitutional amendment (HJR 39) by 75,588 to 38,518 authorizing the Alaska Permanent Fund: at least 25% of the state’s mineral lease rentals, royalties and related revenues must be placed in the fund, whose principal may be used only for income-producing investments designated by law.⁠[7]

The Trans-Alaska Pipeline was completed in 1977, linking the North Slope fields with the port of Valdez, 800 miles (1,300 km) to the south. Alaska’s petroleum output peaked in the 1990s and has declined since.⁠[4]

In 1980 the federal government designated more than 100 million acres in Alaska as parks, preserves, refuges and wilderness. The same year the state Court of Appeals was created.⁠[4][12]

The tanker Exxon Valdez left the Alyeska Pipeline Terminal at 9:12 p.m. on March 23, 1989, loaded with 53,094,510 gallons of North Slope crude; at about 12:04 a.m. on March 24, Good Friday, it ran aground on Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound. Eight of its 11 cargo tanks were ruptured, about 10.8 million gallons of crude oil spilled, and more than 1,000 miles of beach in Southcentral Alaska were oiled.⁠[13]

The U.S. Census Bureau delivered the 2020 Census apportionment results to the President on April 26, 2021, when the resident population of the 50 states and the District of Columbia totaled 331,449,281. Alaska was apportioned 1 seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, the same as after the 2010 Census, and has 3 electoral votes in the 2024 and 2028 presidential elections.⁠[14][15][16][17]

The Alaska State Legislature consists of a Senate and a House of Representatives: the Senate has 20 members serving four-year terms, half elected every two years, and the House has 40 members serving two-year terms.⁠[7][18]

The governor and lieutenant governor are the only elected executive officers; they are elected together to four-year terms beginning at noon on the first Monday in December after the election. The governor appoints the heads of all 14 state departments.⁠[4][7][18]

As of November 2026 the governor is Mike Dunleavy, who took office on December 3, 2018, and began a second term on December 5, 2022. He came to Alaska in 1983, spent nearly two decades as a teacher, principal and superintendent in northwest Arctic communities, served on the Mat-Su Borough School Board, and was a state senator for five years.⁠[19][20]

The state court system has two appellate courts, the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals, and two trial courts, the Superior Court and the District Court. The constitution provides for a Supreme Court of three justices that may be enlarged by law; it now has five justices, and the Court of Appeals has a chief judge and three associate judges. The first justices’ terms began in August 1959.⁠[12][7]

Local government takes two basic forms, cities and boroughs, a borough being similar to a county elsewhere. Thirteen organized boroughs cover about one-third of the state, and most of the state is not organized into political units. The Capitol was built in 1931 as the Federal and Territorial Building, and Juneau and Honolulu are the only U.S. state capitals reachable only by boat or plane.⁠[18]

In Census Bureau 2010 measurements, the state has a total area of 665,384 square miles (1,723,337 km²), of which 570,641 square miles (1,477,953 km²) is land and 94,743 square miles (245,383 km²) is water. Alaska is more than twice the size of TexasTexasTexas is a U.S. state in the south-central United States, with its capital at Austin and its largest city Houston. It was admitted to the Union on December 29, 1845, as the 28th state, and the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted 29,145,505 residents.Open the full entry, and about one-third of it lies within the Arctic Circle.⁠[21][4]

The state has eight physiographic and environmental regions, from the narrow southeastern Panhandle and the Aleutian chain to the Brooks Range and the coastal plain of the North Slope. The border with Canada’s Yukon runs due north along the 141st meridian from the summit of Mount St. Elias (18,008 feet, 5,489 m).⁠[10]

Denali, in the Alaska Range, rises to 20,310 feet (6,190 m), the highest peak in North America, and 17 of the 20 highest peaks in the United States are in Alaska. The Yukon River, nearly 2,000 miles long, is the third longest river in the country. Alaska has more than 3,000 rivers and over 3 million lakes, the largest being Lake Iliamna, and an estimated 100,000 glaciers covering about 29,000 square miles, or 5% of the state; the largest is the Malaspina Glacier.⁠[4][2]

Alaska has 6,640 miles of coastline and, including islands, 33,904 miles of shoreline. Point Barrow is the northernmost point of the United States. The state has more than 70 potentially active volcanoes and about 5,000 earthquakes a year.⁠[2]

In the interior, winter temperatures commonly drop to –55 °F (–48 °C) and summer temperatures can reach 100 °F (38 °C), annual precipitation is 8 to 15 inches (20 to 38 cm), and summer daylight can last up to 21 hours; the southeastern Panhandle is one of the wettest regions in North America.⁠[4]

Alaska’s population was 72,524 in 1940 and 226,167 in 1960. More than half of the people live in south-central Alaska, nearly half of all residents live in Anchorage, and more than four-fifths live in towns and cities.⁠[4][22]

In the 2020 Census, 22 percent of residents identified as wholly or partly Indigenous, the highest share of any state; non-Hispanic whites made up about 58 percent, Hispanics about 7 percent, Asian Americans about 6 percent and African Americans 3 percent. About 8 percent of residents were born abroad.⁠[4]

Preliminary data released by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis on March 28, 2025, put Alaska’s 2024 current-dollar GDP at $69,969 million, with real GDP growth of 1.5%.⁠[23]

Services are the dominant economic activity by earnings and employment. Tourism expanded after the mid-20th century, with Denali the most popular destination, and government is a major employer. Alaska’s fishing industry is among the largest in the United States, salmon being especially valuable; farming is limited and most food is imported.⁠[4]

The best farmland is in the Matanuska Valley, the Tanana River valley and the Kenai Peninsula lowlands. Tongass National Forest is the largest national forest in the United States. Gold, silver, zinc and lead mines include Fort Knox, Pogo, Red Dog and Greens Creek.⁠[4]

The state describes Alaska Native corporations as having distributed more than $4 billion in dividends to shareholders since ANCSA, employing tens of thousands of Alaskans and making up more than half of the 49 largest Alaska-based companies.⁠[11]

The state constitution provides for the education of all children. The University of Alaska, a land-grant college, opened in 1922 near Fairbanks. The Museum of the North holds 2.2 million artifacts and specimens.⁠[4]

Dog mushing is the official state sport. The Iditarod race began in 1967 as about 27 miles (43 km) and now covers 1,150 miles (1,850 km), and the World Eskimo-Indian Olympics are held each July in Fairbanks.⁠[4][6]

Jack London’s The Call of the Wild (1903) and White Fang (1906) are set in Alaska, and John Muir’s Travels in Alaska was published in 1915. The Alaska SeaLife Center in Seward is the state’s only public aquarium.⁠[4]

The name comes from an Aleut word for the mainland, which the state renders as “great land.” The state’s nickname is “The Last Frontier,” and it is also called the “Land of the Midnight Sun.”⁠[6][24][4]

The state motto, “North to the Future,” was proposed by the Juneau newsman Richard Peter and chosen in 1967 during the Alaska Purchase Centennial. The state seal was first designed in 1910, during the territorial period, and shows the northern lights, mining, railroads, sea transportation, forests, agriculture, and fishing and wildlife; the constitution made the territorial seal, with “State” in place of “Territory,” the seal of the state.⁠[6][7]

The state flower is the forget-me-not, the bird the willow ptarmigan, the tree the Sitka spruce, the fish the king salmon, the gem jade and the mineral gold. The state fossil is the woolly mammoth (1986), the marine mammal the bowhead whale (1983), the insect the four-spot skimmer dragonfly (1995) and the land mammal the moose (May 1, 1998, signed by Governor Tony Knowles).⁠[6]

State of Alaska: Official website: https://www.alaska.gov/ (opens in a new window).⁠[25]

Office of the Governor: Official website: https://gov.alaska.gov/ (opens in a new window).⁠[20][25]

Alaska Court System: Official website: https://courts.alaska.gov/ (opens in a new window).⁠[12]