USA Alaska - The Land : USA  

USA Alaska - The Land - Travel guide

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USA Alaska - The Land

The Land

The Great Land, The Last Frontier, Land of the Midnight Sun; once called Seward’s Folly and Seward’s Icebox, Alaska takes it name from a Aleut word meaning 'great land' or 'that which the sea breaks against'.

Alaska is located in the Northwest of North America; the northernmost and westernmost state and is bordered by the Canada's Yukon Territory and British Columbia (east). The Gulf of Alaska and Pacific Ocean (south), Bering Sea, Bering Strait, and Chukchi Sea (west), and Beaufort Sea and Arctic Ocean (north) surround the remaining land mass.

At 656,424 square miles Alaska is the largest state. The highest elevation is Denali (Mt. McKinley) 20,320 feet. The lowest elevation is sea level.

Alaskan weather is greatly influenced by extremes in daylight. At Barrow, on the Arctic Coast, the sun is not seen from late November until late January. In summer, when Alaska is 'the land of the midnight sun', Barrow residents enjoy continuous daylight from early May to early August. The state’s highest temperature was recorded north of the Arctic Circle, in Yukon Flats, where standing water slowly cooks during the long summer days. The record lowest temperature, taken at Prospect Creek, is the lowest in the United States but not in North America.

The highest temperature recorded was 90° while the lowest temperature on record in the United States, -79.8 degrees was observed at Prospect Creek Camp in the Endicott Mountains of northern Alaska on Jan. 23, 1971.

National Parks & Monuments include the Bering Land Bridge, Denali, Gates of the Arctic, Glacier Bay, Katmai, Kenai Fjords, Kobuk Valley, Lake Clark, Noatak , Wrangell-St. Elias, Yukon-Charley Rivers, Admiralty Island, Aniakchak, Cape Krusenstern, Misty Fjords.