Alaska Webcams

Alaska is a huge state, the largest state in the United States by area. Our beautiful Alaska has a longer coastline than all the other U.S. states combined.

Alaska borders Canada to the east, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the west and south, with Russia further west across the Bering Strait.

From Wikipedia: Alaska is the largest state in the United States by area, the 4th least populous and the least densely populated of the 50 United States. Approximately half of Alaska’s 731,449 residents live within the Anchorage metropolitan area. Alaska’s economy is dominated by the oil, natural gas, and fishing industries, resources which it has in abundance. Tourism is also a significant part of the economy.

Occupied for thousands of years by indigenous peoples, the territory of Alaska was considered up for grabs by European powers, who wanted to control its trade. The United States purchased Alaska from Russia on March 30, 1867, for $7.2 million ($118 million adjusted for inflation) at approximately two cents per acre. The area went through several administrative changes before becoming organized as a territory on May 11, 1912. It was admitted as the 49th state of the U.S. on January 3, 1959.

The name “Alaska” had been introduced in the Russian colonial period, when it was used to refer to the peninsula. It is derived from the Aleut alaxsxaq, meaning “the mainland” or, more literally, “the object towards which the action of the sea is directed”. It is also known as Alyeska, the “great land”, an Aleut word derived from the same root.