Alaska Biggest State Essay

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The Biggest State in the US
The 50 US states vary in land mass, water mass, and population. Water masses within state territories include lakes, rivers, coastal waters bodies, and territorial waters. Among the states, Alaska is the biggest by land and water, in fact, its coastline is longer than the coastlines of all the other US states combined. Alaska is so big that the second-largest state, Texas, is a mere 40% of its total area. The state of Alaska is a bigger area than the combined area of 22 smallest US states. In relation to the entire US, Alaska covers 18% of the US and 21% of the contiguous US by area and is the 7th largest subnational area in the world. If Alaska was a sovereign country, it would have been the 18th largest globally.
History of Alaska
Alaskan natives occupied the territories for many years before the arrival of Europeans. In the 17th century, Alaska started receiving Russian settlers while the first European contact came on August 21,1732 with the second contact in 1741 and permanent settlers in 1784. The Tsimshian people from the British Columbia started settling in Alaska in 1887 with permission from the US Congress and American President Grover Cleveland, afterward, the settlers suffered several mistreatments from Russia …show more content…

Technically being part of the continental US, this state is the only non-contiguous US state in the continental North America. The state has a total area of 665,384.04 square miles, 570,640.95 square miles being land area and 94,743.10 square miles covered in water. There are six regions in Alaska namely, Southcentral, Southeast, Interior, Southwest, North Slope, and the Aleutian Islands all hosting the 3 million Alaskan lakes and 100,000 glaciers (half of the world’s total glaciers) covering 16,000 square miles of land and 1,200 square miles of tidal zone. Alaska’s tidal shoreline is roughly 34,000

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