Alaska Geography

When people start talking about Alaska, you can almost tell immediately if they have been there or not and if they actually know what they are talking about. If someone hasn’t been there and they start talking about the state, you quickly realize that they have no idea how big the state actually is. You really need to travel the entire state, from the first villages of the panhandle along the Inside Passage, to the Aleutian Islands, along the southern coast of Cook Inlet, into the interior of the state, then all the way northwest to Nome and all the northeast to the Arctic Wildlife Refuge...it is one huge state. The map I’ve included with this post gives you an idea of total area compared to the total area of the Lower 48. Look at that map for a minute and just think about it!!!

I still chuckle at a comment Pete made during our trip there in ’93. John and Karen put us up for 2 weeks and at that time John was a commercial cargo pilot and they owned their own two-seater plane. John graciously took Pete up for a quick look see one day. It must have been one heck of a flight...cause Pete came back glowing. He walked in the door and said, “Well, now I feel like I’ve really seen Alaska!” John, Karen and I just looked at each other and grinned. Not because Pete was so happy, but because he did not have a clue....it was like he had seen one leaf on a tree that had a billion leaves! For Pete to have really seen the state he would have spent 2 weeks in that plane with John.

So, for those who need a little more description, Alaska is the largest state in the United States in land area at 586,412 square miles, over twice the size of Texas, the next largest state. Alaska is larger than all but 18 sovereign countries. Without Alaska, Brazil and Australia are larger than the United States. 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. Another photo with this post shows the geographic regions of the state. Few other of the remaining 49 states can claim such diversity. I’ve read somewhere that Alaska boasts 5 unique climatic regions, a little different from the geographic regions...I wish I remembered them all, but the one that was a surprise was that somewhere in the state, don’t ask me where, Alaska has a desert!! Go figure.