The 49th state, Alaska represents a vast, mythic territory for many Americans, embodying images of opportunities, of the last frontier and of the struggle of humans against nature. Since its purchase from Russia in 1867, it has been a place of extremes, epitomized in its initial label as “Seward’s Folly” by those who found the wealth of Cuba much more appealing. In size, Alaska dwarfs all other states: its 615,230 square mile area surpasses the combined acreage of Washington, Oregon, California, Idaho, Nevada and Utah. Thirty-one thousand miles of coastal inlets dwarf the entire Eastern seaboard. Yet its population remains tiny—615,900—and only 160,000 acres have been cleared for development. Alaska’s largest city Anchorage, despite amassing nearly half of that population (257,780), barely tops the size of small cities in the lower 48. Nonetheless, the riches of the state, from nineteenth-century gold rushes to its fisheries to oil fields since the 1960s, also conjure visions of wealth and opportunity despite a high cost of living produced by sheer size and transportation costs.

Images of vast plains of snow, bays of glaciers and the nation’s highest mountain also evoke a vivid and unyielding landscape torn by volcanoes and earthquakes (more than 1,000 a year above 3.5 on the Richter scale). Yet Alaska also encompasses ecological zones as distinct as its marshy interior, southern rainforests and arctic tundra.

Alaska’s Aleutian islands constituted the original land bridge by which the earliest inhabitants crossed from Asia to North America. Various indigenous populations adapted thereafter to its climate and geography—most notably the Eskimos (Inuit) who live in northern Alaska and Canada. The gentler southern coasts, interior and lower panhandle were also home to Athabaskan tribes like the Tlingit and Haida, linked to populations of British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest. Aleuts still live in the southern islands that bear their name, which have also seen strong military development.

The panhandle area became the first point of contact between Native Americans and Europeans with Russian colonization in 1714; monuments of the Russian capital of Sitka still illustrate this heritage of 150 years of domination. The panhandle remained the center of the state’s population into the twentieth century, as well as the site of the current capital, Juneau.

The potential of the northern reaches of the state, however, were explored by fishermen, trappers and miners, and especially by those lured to the state by gold strikes from 1848 onward. These spurred the development of Anchorage in the late nineteenth century, although the city really only took shape as a midpoint on the railroad from the ice-free port of Seward to the interior mining capital of Fairbanks, 200 miles south of the Arctic circle. By 1920 Anchorage still had only 1,865 people, growing significantly only after military and economic investment during and after the Second World War.

The opportunities of Alaska, incorporated as a US territory in 1912, also delayed its statehood by those who feared taxes or limitations on fisheries and free enterprise. Bills to admit the state were successfully thwarted for generations before responsibilities of citizens to pay for local government were clarified in the 1950s and the state admitted in 1959. This also opened the state to increasing private land ownership after nearly a century of domination by the US government; issues of public and private land, as well as Native American claims, have continued to shape development. Alaskan politicians tended to be Republican and often have defended development.

Alaskan state development thereafter was shaped by oil and gas, which now account for 85 percent of tax revenues, including a roughly $1,000 dividend returned to citizens each year under the Alaska Permanent Fund (established 1980). While petroleum has been extracted from various points, most now comes from fields on the North Slope, beginning with Prudhoe Bay in 1968, which had produced 9 billion barrels by 1996 with an estimated reserve of 3.1 billion in addition to natural gas resources. These reserves on the Arctic sea were connected to US markets by the transAlaska Pipeline, 800 miles in length, constructed by a consortium of oil companies between 1974 and 1977. The oil industry has also spurred concerns for environmental protection both in the pipelines’ intrusion into wilderness and horrific spills like the Exxon Valdez disaster.

These spills also directly influence Alaska’s second-largest industry, tourism. Over 1 million visit annually for cruises or explorations of the state’s extensive park system and other resources. Prime attractions include Glacier Bay National Park, Katmai National Park and Denali National Park, as well as the 1,100 mile dog sled race on the Iditarod Trail, run since 1973. Tourism also stimulates a growing service and construction sector alongside traditional industries like fishing (Alaska supplies more than half the US catch) and forestry.

Tourists, moreover, reaffirm the image of Alaska reinforced by television (Northern Exposure’s 1990–5 portrayal of the cockeyed town of Cecily, CBS) or movies from Chaplin’s Gold Rush (1925) to The Edge (1997) and Limbo (1999). These, like literary memoirs including Joe McGinnis’ Going to Extremes (1980) and Larry Kaniut’s Danger Stalks the Land (1999) continually stress the agonistic elements of the frontier state, eclipsing the everyday struggles and creations of a special place and culture within America.