The start of a new daily digest

I thought I would start a regular daily digest and fun facts about Alaska. To get started, I will give you some statistics and facts from our state

Misclleneous facts about Alaska

Motto: “North to the Future”
Nickname: “The Last Frontier”
State Capital: Juneau
Purchased from Russia: 1867
Organized as a territory: 1912
Entered the Union: Jan. 3, 1959, as 49th state
Governor: Sean Parnell
Land area: 570,373.6 square miles, or about 365,000,000 acres, according to revised figures from the U.S. Bureau of the Census in 1996. The largest state in the country, Alaska is one-fifth the size of the combined Lower 48 states.
Largest City in population:Anchorage, home to an estimated 279,249 people according to 2008 data, which is 40% of the state’s population
Largest city in area: Sitka, with 4,710 squares miles, 1,816 square miles of which is water. Juneau is second, with an area of 3,108 squares miles
Area per peson: About 0.92 square mile for each person in Alaska. New York State has 0.003 square miles per person.
Highest/lowest temperatures: Highest 100F at fort Yukon, 1915. Lowest -80F at Prospect Creek Camp 1971.
Heaviest annual snowfall: 974.5 inches at Thompson Pass near Valdez, during the winter of 1952-53
Tallest mountain in North America: Mount McKinley, known as Denali to Alaskans, at 20,320 feet
America’s biggest earthquake: Occurred on March 27, 1964 (Good Friday). Measured at 9.2 on the Richter scale – the strongest ever recorded in North America – and devastated much of Southcentral Alaska.
Greatest concentration of glaciers in the nation: About 29,000 square miles is covered by glaciers

Fun Fact: Snowmachiners breaking trail for the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race discovered that if they wired a can of SPAM on their exhaust manifold, they had a perfect hot meal in 50 miles! (Courtesy of Mr. Whitekeys)

Much of this was taken from “Alaska Almanac: Facts About Alaska”