Jump directly to the section on Alaska, the capital of Juneau, or Wood-Tikchik State Park.
The state of Alaska holds a number of records. It is the largest of the United States. It is the northernmost state. Its coastline is longer than all the other U.S. states combined. And as of 2009, it is also the least densly populated state.
Alaska's land area is 586,412 square miles, making it more than twice the size of Texas and larger than all but 18 of the world's sovereign countries. Of this land area, approximately 65%, or around 381,168 square miles, is owned and managed by the U.S. federal government as public lands.
The capital of Alaska, Juneau, has an interesting property: despite being positioned on the mainland of the North American continent, it is not connected by road to the rest of the North American highway system. Most traffic moves in and out of Juneau by ferry.
According to 2008 U.S. Census Bureau data, the city and surrounding borough hold 30,988 full-time residents. Anchorage is much larger, with 279,243 residents in 2008, but talks on moving the capital to Anchorage have not been productive.
Wood-Tikchik State Park is the largest state park in Alaska, as well as the largest in the nation. It covers an area of wilderness over 1.6 million acres in size (over 2500 square miles).
Surveyed by a National Park Service team in 1970, Alaska added the land to its state park system in 1978. That decision was influenced in part by the fact that the world's largest run of sockeye salmon return to the headwaters of the area's wild rivers every year to spawn.