While I have never been to the great state of Alaska, we have a Bookcase for Every Child project taking place in Fairbanks, Alaska, thanks to my good friend Randall Aragon. For several years Randall was Police Chief in Conway, Arkansas, but he left Conway and went to Fairbanks, where he helped get a bookcase project started.
The state of Alaska is known as “The Last Frontier” because much of the state is not yet fully settled. In 1867, Secretary of State William Seward purchased Alaska from Russia for $7,200,000. The 586,412 square miles of Alaskan territory represented an investment of about 2 cents per acre.
At the time, many Americans thought the region was a waste of ice and snow. They called it “Seward’s Folly” and “Seward’s Icebox”, but Alaska proved to be rich in fish, minerals, timber and potential waterpower. The value of the resources taken from the region has paid back the purchase price hundreds of times. Huge oil reserves at Prudhoe Bay, along the Arctic Coast, rank as Alaska’s chief source of wealth.
The name Alaska comes from a word used by the people of the Aleutian Islands. The word means “Great Land” or mainland. When Alaska became our 49th state on January 3, 1959, it was the first new state in 47 years and the first state to be separated from the rest of the continental United States by another country. About 500 miles of Canadian territory separates Alaska from the state of Washington. At its most western point, the Alaskan mainland is 51 miles from Russia.
Today, Alaska is the largest state in the U.S. It is almost 1/5th as large as the rest of the United States and more than twice the size of Texas, the second largest state. The distance from east to west across the state of Alaska is 2,200 miles, but it has fewer people than any other state. Less than a half million people are permanent residents. Unlike other states, Alaska is divided into 11 local governmental units called organized boroughs. The capital is Juneau, where this column ran at one time, and Anchorage is its largest city. Other important Alaskan cities are Fairbanks, Nome, Sitka, Kodiak, Seward and Ketchikan.
The state flower is the Forget-Me-Not, the state tree is the Sitka spruce and the state bird is the Willow Ptarmigan. The official motto of the state is “North to the Future.” It’s interesting to note that the state flag of Alaska “The Big Dipper” was designed by a 13-year-old school boy who said the North Star stood for the future of Alaska. The state of Alaska has magnificent mountain scenery, with the tallest mountain in our nation, Mount McKinley, at 20,320 feet, being located in this beautiful state. It is also famous for big game hunting and fabulous fishing. Let me say here in closing that I hope you are enjoying my presentation of all 50 of our great states. I have made speeches in 17 states, and this column has run in 35 states. I will confess that Alaska is one of the states that I have wanted to visit but never have. We do have one member of this family who has — Janis was once there in her earlier life.