Fun Facts About Alaska

Alaska is big, wild, and full of surprises. It has more coastline than the rest of the country, more glaciers than anyone has counted precisely, and towns where the sun doesn’t set for weeks in summer. Here are some facts about the 49th state that even well-traveled visitors may not know.

22 Fun Facts About Alaska

Geography and Nature
 

1. Alaska is more than twice the size of Texas. It covers about 663,000 square miles, larger than Texas, California, and Montana combined.
2. It has more coastline than every other state combined. Alaska has 6,640 miles of coastline, and 33,904 miles of shoreline once you count its islands.
3. There are more than 3 million lakes. Alaska also has more than 3,000 rivers. The largest lake, Lake Iliamna, covers more than 1,000 square miles.
4. About 100,000 glaciers. Glaciers cover roughly 5 percent of the state, about 29,000 square miles. The largest, Malaspina Glacier, covers about 850 square miles.
5. Seventeen of the 20 highest peaks in the United States are in Alaska. The highest is North America’s tallest mountain at 20,310 feet. Long known in Alaska as Denali, it was officially renamed Mount McKinley by the federal government in 2025, while the surrounding park remains Denali National Park and Preserve.
6. It’s the northernmost, westernmost, and easternmost state. Alaska holds the northernmost point in the U.S. (Point Barrow). Because the Aleutian Islands cross the 180th meridian, it also holds both the westernmost point (Amatignak Island) and the easternmost point (Semisopochnoi Island).
7. The ground is restless. Alaska has more than 70 potentially active volcanoes and records about 5,000 earthquakes a year.
8. Some towns go months without a sunset, or a sunrise. In Utqiaġvik (formerly Barrow), the northernmost town in the U.S., the sun stays up from about mid-May to early August. In winter, it doesn’t rise for about two months.
9. You can’t drive to the capital. Juneau has no road connection to the rest of Alaska or North America, so everyone arrives by plane or boat. Read more in our facts about Juneau.

Wildlife
 

1. Almost all of America’s brown bears live here. Alaska is home to more than 98 percent of the brown bears in the United States.
2. Kodiak bears live on just one group of islands. These large brown bears are found only in the Kodiak Archipelago, and big males can weigh around 1,500 pounds.
3. One island has about 1,600 brown bears. Admiralty Island, near Juneau, has the highest density of brown bears in North America. The Tlingit call it Kootznoowoo, the “Fortress of the Bears.”
4. The state land mammal is the moose. It was named in 1998. The state bird is the willow ptarmigan, which changes color with the seasons, and the state mammal is the bowhead whale.
5. Wild wood bison came back after more than a century. In 2015, Alaska released wood bison along the lower Innoko and Yukon rivers. It was the first wild wood bison herd in the United States in more than 100 years.

For more on Alaska’s animals, see our guide to wildlife in Alaska.

History
 

1. The U.S. bought Alaska for about 2 cents an acre. In 1867, Secretary of State William Seward agreed to buy Alaska from Russia for $7.2 million. Critics called it “Seward’s Folly.”
2. The handover happened in Sitka. Alaska was formally transferred to the United States on October 18, 1867, in Sitka. Alaskans still celebrate October 18 as Alaska Day.
3. A teenager designed the state flag. In 1927, Benny Benson, an Unangax̂ (Aleut) student at a mission home in Seward, won a territory-wide contest with his design of the Big Dipper and the North Star on a blue field. For nearly a century, he was described as 13, but historians corrected his birth date in 2022 and found he was actually 14.
4. Alaska became the 49th state in 1959, just months before Hawaii became the 50th.
5. Its name comes from an Aleut word, often translated as “great land” or “mainland.”

Culture
 

1. The state sport is dog mushing. Its best-known race, the Iditarod, covers about 1,000 miles between Anchorage and Nome each March.
2. Alaska is home to many distinct Alaska Native cultures, including the Iñupiat, Yup’ik, Unangax̂, Athabascan, Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian peoples, each with its own languages and traditions.
3. Juneau hosts one of the largest Alaska Native gatherings. Every other June, the Celebration festival brings together thousands of Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian dancers and visitors.

Seeing Alaska for Yourself

Many of these facts are best appreciated in person, whether that means watching brown bears on Admiralty Island, walking the ground in Sitka where Alaska changed hands, or cruising past tidewater glaciers. An Adventure Life Trip Planner can help you build a trip around the experiences that interest you most. We’ll match you with the right small ship, land tour, or wilderness lodge, suggest the best time to go, and handle details such as hotels and transfers so the pieces fit together.

For the background story of the state, from its first peoples to statehood, see our Introduction to Alaska. To start planning, see our guides to the best places to visit in Alaska and the best time to take an Alaskan cruise. Our Alaska small-ship cruises visit many of the places mentioned here, from Sitka to Glacier Bay.