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Alaska is by far the largest state of the USA, but it is also the least populated state.
 
During the Last Glacial Maximum sea levels were much lower and Alaska and Siberia were connected by the Beringia land bridge. Hardened hunter gatherers wandered in from Siberia and left their marks in the Bluefish Caves, a whopping 24800 years ago.
Some 12.000 years later, when the glaciers receded they could finally move south and the New World was theirs to conquer.
Along the coast they may have met seafaring peoples that had used the Kelp Highway to reach the American shores a couple of millennia earlier.
 
In the 17th century Russian colonists found the area populated by several native Alaskan peoples. That did not stop them from trading, settling and confiscating the territory.
In 1876 the Russians sold Alaska to the USA for 7.2 million dollar, a few decades later Skagway in the east saw many stampeders disembark to join the arduous Klondike goldrush.
 
Alaska became the 49th state of the USA in 1959.
The economy is based on oil, which is pumped from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez via the Trans-Alaska Pipeline.
 
The state has a very diverse landscape, from toendras in the barren north, snow capped mountains in the interior, the glacier fed Prince William Sound in the south and the 300-some Aleutian islands, the farthest island sits just 5 km of Russian territory.
 
 
Alaska interior
Alaska southcentral
Alaska east