Alaska's name comes from the Eskimo word "Alakshak” meaning "great lands" or "peninsula”.
Alaska was the 49th state added to the United States.
Yes, Alaska is a part of the United States, although some people do not realize that. *smile*
It is also the largest state… a total of approximately 656,425 square miles (Over twice as big as Texas... now that is BIG).
Wow!! Alaska has a lot of coastline.
Since I personally haven’t been along the whole coast to measure, so I suppose I will have to just tell you that it is somewhere between 33,904 - 47,000 miles long (two of the quotes I have seen).
If someone can narrow that down a little and give me an accurate coastline mileage, I will gladly add it to the page here. *smile*
For those of you that may not know where Alaska is, I'll wait for you to pull out your copy of the United States Atlas. *smile*
(If you don't have an Atlas, you can get: National Geographic Atlas of the World from Amazon books.)
Got your Atlas? If you still don't have an Altas, here is a picture to show you exactly how/where Alaska is situated in North American.
No, it isn't where a lot of maps show us to be, in the middle of the ocean.
Alaska, as you will see, is actually in the upper most left hand corner of the North American (as your looking at the map), with Canada inbetween the main United States and Alaska.
The location is approximately: 58.38858 N, 134,13342 W.
