Alaska

Indigenous people have lived in Alaska for thousands of years, and it is widely believed that the region served as the entry point for the initial settlement of North America by way of the Bering land bridge.

Ben Potter, the University of Alaska Fairbanks archaeologist who unearthed the remains at the Upward Sun River site in 2013, named this new group Ancient Beringian.

[15] The Tlingit people developed a society with a matrilineal kinship system of property inheritance and descent in what is today Southeast Alaska, along with parts of British Columbia and the Yukon.

This hypothesis is based on the testimony of Chukchi geographer Nikolai Daurkin, who had visited Alaska in 1764–1765 and who had reported on a village on the Kheuveren River, populated by "bearded men" who "pray to the icons".

[18] The first European vessel to reach Alaska is generally held to be the St. Gabriel under the authority of the surveyor M. S. Gvozdev and assistant navigator I. Fyodorov on August 21, 1732, during an expedition of Siberian Cossack A. F. Shestakov and Russian explorer Dmitry Pavlutsky (1729–1735).

[21] Russia's contemporary ruler Tsar Alexander II, the Emperor of the Russian Empire, King of Poland and Grand Duke of Finland, also planned the sale;[22] the purchase was made on March 30, 1867.

[27] On March 27, 1964, the massive Good Friday earthquake killed 133 people and destroyed several villages and portions of large coastal communities, mainly by the resultant tsunamis and landslides.

Anchorage sustained great destruction or damage to many inadequately earthquake-engineered houses, buildings, and infrastructure (paved streets, sidewalks, water and sewer mains, electrical systems, and other human-made equipment), particularly in the several landslide zones along Knik Arm.

Southeast of Anchorage, areas around the head of Turnagain Arm near Girdwood and Portage dropped as much as 8 feet (2.4 m), requiring reconstruction and fill to raise the Seward Highway above the new high tide mark.

Post-quake tsunamis severely affected Whittier, Seward, Kodiak, and other Alaskan communities, as well as people and property in British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, and California.

[37] Chance provided breaking news of the catastrophic events that continued to develop following the magnitude 9.2 earthquake, and she served as the voice of the public safety office, coordinating response efforts, connecting available resources to needs around the community, disseminating information about shelters and prepared food rations, passing messages of well-being between loved ones, and helping to reunite families.

[38] In the longer term, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers led the effort to rebuild roads, clear debris, and establish new townsites for communities that had been completely destroyed, at a cost of $110 million.

[40] In 1989, the Exxon Valdez hit a reef in the Prince William Sound, spilling more than 11 million gallons (42 megalitres) of crude oil over 1,100 miles (1,800 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 and the proposed Pebble Mine.

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.

[51] The Alaska Marine Highway provides a vital surface transportation link throughout the area and country, as only three communities (Haines, Hyder and Skagway) enjoy direct connections to the contiguous North American road system.

Some of these islands fall in the Eastern Hemisphere, but 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.

The survey's inventory of cultural resources includes objects, structures, buildings, sites, districts, and travel ways, with a general provision that they are more than fifty years old.

An area stretching from the northern side of the Seward Peninsula to the Kobuk River valley (i.e., the region around Kotzebue Sound) is technically a desert, with portions receiving less than 10 in (25 cm) of precipitation annually.

[110] In 2018, The Gospel Coalition published an article using Pew data and determined non-churchgoing Christians nationwide did not attend religious services often through the following: practicing the faith in other ways, not finding a house of worship they liked, disliking sermons and feeling unwelcomed, and logistics.

Its industrial outputs are crude petroleum, natural gas, coal, gold, precious metals, zinc and other mining, seafood processing, timber and wood products.

[137] 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.

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.

[178] Making regular flights to most villages and towns within the state commercially viable is difficult, so they are heavily subsidized by the federal government through the Essential Air Service program.

The bulk of remaining commercial flight offerings come from small regional commuter airlines such as Ravn Alaska, PenAir, and Frontier Flying Service.

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.

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.

[181] 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.

[184] In January 2011, it was reported that a $1 billion project to connect Asia and rural Alaska was being planned, aided in part by $350 million in stimulus from the federal government.

A part of the revenue collected from certain state taxes and license fees (such as petroleum, aviation motor fuel, telephone cooperative) is shared with municipalities in Alaska.

The Russian settlement of St. Paul's Harbor (present-day Kodiak town ), Kodiak Island , 1814
Miners and prospectors climb the Chilkoot Trail during the 1898 Klondike Gold Rush .
U.S. troops navigate snow and ice during the Battle of Attu in May 1943.
Bob Bartlett and Ernest Gruening , Alaska's inaugural U.S. Senators, hold the 49 star U.S. Flag after the admission of Alaska as the 49th state.
Oil pooled on rocks on the shore of Prince William Sound after the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill.
Denali is the highest peak in North America
Although entirely east of the International Date Line (the triangular kink in the line was agreed upon the U.S. acquisition of Alaska ), the Aleutian Islands cross the 180th meridian , such that they contain both the westernmost ( Amatignak ) and the easternmost ( Semisopochnoi .) points in the United States.
Anchorage , Alaska's largest city
Fairbanks , Alaska's second-largest city and by a significant margin the largest city in Alaska's interior
Juneau , Alaska's third-largest city and its capital
Bethel , the largest city in the Unorganized Borough and in rural Alaska
Homer , showing (from bottom to top) the edge of downtown, its airport and the Spit
Utqiaġvik (Browerville neighborhood near Eben Hopson Middle School shown), known colloquially for many years by the nickname "Top of the World", is the northernmost city in the United States.
Cordova , built in the early 20th century to support the Kennecott Mines and the Copper River and Northwestern Railway , has been preserved as a fishing community since their closure.
Main Street in Talkeetna
Alaska has more acreage of public land owned by the federal government than any other state. [ 62 ]
Ethnic origins in Alaska
Map of the largest racial/ethnic group by borough. Red indicates Native American, blue indicates non-Hispanic white, and green indicates Asian. Darker shades indicate a higher proportion of the population.
Aerial view of infrastructure at the Prudhoe Bay Oil Field
The Trans-Alaska Pipeline transports oil, Alaska's most financially important export, from the North Slope to Valdez . The heat pipes in the column mounts are pertinent, since they disperse heat upwards and prevent melting of permafrost .
Alaska proven oil reserves peaked in 1973 and have declined more than 60% since then.
Alaskan oil production peaked in 1988 and has declined more than 75% since then.
Halibut , both as a sport fish and commercially, is important to the state's economy.
Mask Display at Iñupiat Heritage Center in Utqiaġvik
A dog team in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race , arguably the most popular winter event in Alaska
An Aces game at "The Sully"
The Kachemak Bay Campus of the University of Alaska Anchorage , located in downtown Homer
The MV Tustumena (named after Tustumena Glacier ) is one of the state's many ferries, providing service between the Kenai Peninsula , Kodiak Island and the Aleutian Chain .
The center of state government in Juneau . The large buildings in the background are, from left to right: the Court Plaza Building (known colloquially as the " Spam Can "), the State Office Building (behind), the Alaska Office Building, the John H. Dimond State Courthouse, and the Alaska State Capitol . Many of the smaller buildings in the foreground are also occupied by state government agencies.
A line graph showing the presidential vote by party from 1960 to 2020 in Alaska
Republican Don Young held Alaska's sole U.S. House seat for 49 years, from 1973 to 2022.