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
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.