Alaska covers 1,723,337 km² (665,384 sq mi), making it by far the largest US state and about 17.5% of the whole United States. It is more than twice the size of Texas, the second-largest state, and larger than Texas, California and Montana combined. If it were a country it would sit between Libya (1,759,541 km²) and Iran (1,648,195 km²) on the world list, around 17th place, and it is the seventh-largest first-level subdivision of any country on Earth. Yet it had only 733,391 residents at the 2020 census, about 0.42 people per km², the lowest density of any state.
Numbers that large need yardsticks. Below, Alaska is set beside countries, beside other states and beside its own parks and boroughs. The last two sections trace how the territory was outlined, bought and finally fixed between 1825 and 1959.
Between Libya and Iran: Alaska on the world’s country list
The world’s largest countries by area begin with Russia and Canada, and the list passes through Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Mexico and Indonesia before reaching the 1.6–1.8 million km² range. Libya, at 1,759,541 km², is listed 16th; Iran, at 1,648,195 km², is 17th; and Mongolia, at 1,564,116 km², is 18th. Alaska, at 1,723,337 km², drops in between Libya and Iran. Wikipedia’s Alaska article puts it at 18th, “almost the same size as Iran”; the exact placing depends on which area figures are used, but it belongs in that cluster.
Alaska’s published total also varies slightly between sources. The Census Bureau’s state-area table gives 665,384 sq mi, while another commonly quoted figure is 663,268 sq mi (1,717,856 km²); the difference comes from how much coastal and inland water is counted. Water makes up about 13.77% of the total, or 236,507 km², leaving a land area of 1,518,800 km² (586,412 sq mi). Even land alone would place Alaska just behind Mongolia.
Alaska against Texas, California and Montana
Inside the United States the gap is enormous. Texas covers 695,662 km² (268,596 sq mi), so Alaska is about 2.5 times its size. Add California (423,970 km²) and Montana (380,800 km²) to Texas and the three together reach about 1.5 million km², still more than 220,000 km² short of Alaska. For the full head-to-head with the Lone Star State, see is Alaska bigger than Texas?, and for the complete ranking of all 50, our list of the largest US states by area.
The state is also very long and wide. It measures about 3,639 km (2,261 mi) from east to west and about 2,285 km (1,420 mi) from north to south. The Aleutian Islands, a chain of more than 300 small volcanic islands, stretch more than 1,900 km (1,200 mi) into the Pacific, and some of them lie in the Eastern Hemisphere. That makes Alaska at once the northernmost, westernmost and, by longitude, easternmost state. The International Date Line was drawn west of the 180° meridian so that the whole state stays on the same calendar day, and Alaska needs two time zones: the Alaska Time Zone and, for the Aleutians west of 169°30′W, the Hawaii–Aleutian Time Zone.
The coast multiplies the scale again. With its many islands, Alaska has nearly 55,000 km (34,000 mi) of tidal shoreline, and it has a longer coastline than all the other US states combined. Its four largest cities by area are also the four largest in the country; Juneau, the capital, covers 8,430 km² (3,255 sq mi), more than twice the 4,001 km² of Rhode Island, yet it has no road link to the rest of the North American highway system. Anchorage, with 4,420 km² of land, is the fourth-largest US city by area, so a single municipality there is larger than Rhode Island too.
0.42 people per km²: Anchorage and the Unorganized Borough
Area only becomes vivid when you put people on it. At the 2020 census Alaska had 733,391 residents, rising to an estimated 740,133 in 2024. That ranks it 48th of the 50 states by population, ahead of only Vermont and Wyoming, but 50th by density at about 0.42 people per km² (1.1 per sq mi). Wyoming, the next emptiest state, has 2.28 per km², more than five times as many. Mongolia, the most sparsely populated sovereign country, has about 2.24 per km².
Most of those people are packed into a small corner. Anchorage had 291,247 residents in 2020, nearly 40% of the state, and the Anchorage metropolitan area, including the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, had 398,328, more than half of all Alaskans. Most of the rest live along the coast. Much of the interior falls in the Unorganized Borough, which has no county-level government and is run directly by the state; in 2000 it covered 57.71% of Alaska’s area but held only 13.05% of the population.
The census series shows how long the land stayed nearly empty. Alaska counted 33,426 people in 1880 and fewer in 1920 (55,036) than in 1900 (63,592). The big jumps came in the middle of the 20th century: from 72,524 in 1940 to 226,167 in 1960 and past 400,000 by 1980.
Wrangell–St. Elias and the North Slope: parts bigger than whole countries
Single pieces of Alaska rival entire states and nations. Wrangell–St. Elias National Park and Preserve covers about 13.2 million acres (roughly 53,300 km²), making it the largest national park in the United States and larger than Switzerland, at 41,291 km². Its high point, Mount Saint Elias at 5,489 m (18,008 ft), is the second-highest mountain in both the United States and Canada, and the park’s peaks rise within about 16 km (10 mi) of tidewater, one of the highest reliefs in the world. The park also contains the Malaspina Glacier, the largest piedmont glacier in North America, and volcanoes such as Mount Wrangell and Mount Churchill.
The North Slope Borough, the northernmost county-equivalent in the country, covers 94,796 sq mi, almost the size of Wyoming (97,813 sq mi), but had just 11,031 residents in 2020, nearly half of them in Utqiaġvik. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, at about 19.3 million acres (78,051 km²), is the largest national wildlife refuge in the United States.
Ice and water add their own superlatives. Glaciers cover about 75,000 km² of the state, and the Bering Glacier alone spreads over 5,200 km², the largest glacier in North America. Alaska has more than 409,000 natural lakes of at least one hectare, and wetlands and permafrost marsh cover about 487,700 km². Above it all, Denali reaches 6,190 m (20,310 ft), the highest peak in North America, with a vertical rise of about 5,500 m above the surrounding plateaus.
From Beringia to the 141st meridian
Alaska’s size has not always been what it is today, even physically. During the last ice age, lower sea levels exposed the Bering land bridge, part of a region called Beringia. At its greatest extent the bridge was up to 1,000 km wide and covered about 1.6 million km², joining what is now Alaska to Siberia, an area as large as British Columbia and Alberta together. A small human population of at most a few thousand is thought to have lived on it during the Last Glacial Maximum before spreading south into the Americas sometime before 23,000 to 21,000 years ago. Today the clearest reminder is in the Bering Strait, where Russia’s Big Diomede and Alaska’s Little Diomede are only about 4.8 km (3 mi) apart.
The political outline came later. In the Treaty of Saint Petersburg of 1825, Russia and Britain agreed that Russian America would run north from 54°40′N along the coast, with its inland limit set by the coastal mountains but never more than ten marine leagues (about 56 km) from the sea, and then follow the 141st meridian west north to the “Frozen Ocean”. That meridian is still the long, straight border between Alaska and Canada’s Yukon.
1867, 1903 and 1959: purchase, panhandle and statehood
The United States acquired the territory in the Alaska Purchase. The treaty with Russia was signed on 30 March 1867, ratified by the Senate on 9 April and took effect on 18 October; the price was $7.2 million, about two cents an acre, for 1,518,800 km² (586,412 sq mi). Alexander II of Russia, after defeat in the Crimean War, had concluded that the colony would be hard to defend against Britain in any future war, and his envoy Eduard de Stoeckl negotiated the sale with Secretary of State William H. Seward. Most American reactions were positive, but some opponents called it “Seward’s Folly” or “Seward’s Icebox”, arguing that the country had paid for useless land; nearly all Russian settlers left. The new possession was organised as the Department of Alaska, renamed the District of Alaska in 1884 and the Territory of Alaska in 1912. The background is covered in our Alaska Purchase geography guide.
The 1825 wording about “mountains parallel to the coast” left the width of the southeastern panhandle open to argument. The dispute sharpened after the Klondike Gold Rush that began in 1896 in neighbouring Yukon, when Canada wanted its own route to the Pacific. Arbitration in 1903 favoured the American reading, so Canada gained no all-Canadian outlet and the panhandle kept its present shape. The Alaska Statehood Act was signed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower on 7 July 1958, and Alaska became the 49th state on 3 January 1959. On that day it took the title of largest state from Texas, and the lines set by the 1825 treaty, the 1867 purchase and the 1903 arbitration still enclose the 1,723,337 km² that the Census Bureau measures today.