History UsefulNotes / Alaska

* In the ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'' universe, RedChina invades Alaska for its increasingly valuable oil supplies, precipitating WorldWarIII between them and the U.S. The ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 3}}'' DLC ''Operation Anchorage'' allows you to play a virtual reality simulation of the U.S. Army's liberation of Anchorage.

* In ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'', the Cullens are stated to have lived in Alaska before moving down to Forks. Their "cousins", the Denali coven, still live there.

* The 2009 short story "New Archangel" by Desmond Warzel takes place in Sitka at various points in Alaskan history.

In time, however, America would soon realize just what a great deal it had gotten. Some 30 years after the purchase, a series of gold rushes in both Alaska and, more importantly, in the neighboring Yukon Territory of Canada,[[note]]Despite most of the gold being in Canadian territory, the easiest way to get there was by boat, followed by a relatively short overland trek; this meant the majority of prospectors ''had'' to start in Alaska, and it made Skagway into a boom town.[[/note]] turned the area into TheWildWest ''[[RecycledInSpace ON ICE]]'', allowing it to gain enough people to be incorporated as a territory in 1912. After that, the Aleutian Islands were the site of the Aleutian Islands Campaign during UsefulNotes/WorldWarII (and the only part of the United States to be {{invaded|StatesOfAmerica}} during the war). Known as the "Forgotten Campaign", because it was overshadowed by the simultaneous Battle of Guadalcanal, this chapter of WWII made up in bloodshed what it lacked in significance; after a gruelling and savage winter war that rivalled even the Eastern Front in brutality, the Japanese ended it all with an unexpected mass Banzai charge, one of the largest in the Pacific, which split the American lines into pieces and resulted in a day-long hand-to-hand melee until the 29 Japanese survivors finally surrendered.

* There is a town east of Fairbanks called North Pole, which is the official-unofficial place the United States Postal Service sends all the children's letters to Santa Claus. This has been embraced by the town, with North Pole becoming a bit of a StepfordSuburbia[[note]]See the "Truth in Television" section of the linked article.[[/note]] where the entire town is Christmas-themed and local sixth-graders are required to help answer letters to Santa. Incidentally, North Pole is nowhere near Barrow, the American town closest to the ''actual'' North Pole.

* The UsefulNotes/YanksWithTanks have several bases in Alaska, but the most notorious is Shemya, a radar and refueling station miles from anywhere on a tiny island. This place is basically the closest a member U.S. Air Force can get to being truly ReassignedToAntarctica. During the Cold War, missile launches were tracked from Shemya; there was supposedly a tradition that, when you left Shemya for good, you had to take a rock with you, so that one day there would be no more island left and nobody would need to be sent there.

** Considering that Juneau is many hundreds of miles from Anchorage and its environs (the state's major population center), along with the whole can't-drive-there thing making access very inconvenient, there have naturally been several votes to move the state's capital to either Anchorage or some town close to it. The capital remains in Juneau, however, because no one is willing to pay the extra taxes it would take to relocate the government.[[note]]Some of Alaska's state agencies are already headquartered in Anchorage for convenience, but many of the most important ones are not. Moving involves more than just telling the governor and elected officials to meet elsewhere; there are innumerable files and archives, computer servers, and equipment that would have to be moved, to say nothing of relocating the workers and building new facilities to house it all. Plus, the people would surely want a proper statehouse (Alaska's legislature currently meets in a disused bank). Doing all of that would cost hundreds of millions of dollars, so nobody wants to foot the bill.[[/note]] Also many Alaska towns are concerned that making Anchorage, which is already the richest and most populous city in the state by a wide margin, the capital would give Anchorage too much power compared to the rest of the state.

And now, for the part you've been waiting for: UsefulNotes/SarahPalin. Yes, she spent a little more than two years as the governor of this state. She attempted to make a political comeback in 2022 by running for (1) the few months remaining in the congressional term of the state's only member of the House of Representatives, who died that March and (2) a full House term later that year, but ultimately ended up losing both races to Democratic candidate Mary Peltola. The ''other'' [[Creator/MichaelPalin Palin]] (no, not the former governor's now ex-husband) has also been here. His travelogue series about voyaging all around the Pacific Rim nations featured a visit to Alaska, where at one point he really ''could'' see Russia from the part of Alaska he was standing in. So one Palin really did manage it -- but it wasn't Sarah.

In time, however, America would soon realize just what a great deal it had gotten. Some 30 years after the purchase, a series of gold rushes in both Alaska and, more importantly, in the neighboring Yukon Territory of Canada,[[note]]Despite most of the gold being in Canadian territory, the easiest way to get there was by boat, followed by a relatively short overland trek; this meant the majority of prospectors ''had'' to start in Alaska, and it made Skagway into a boom town.[[/note]] turned the area into TheWildWest ''[[RecycledInSpace ON ICE]]'', allowing it to gain enough people to be incorporated as a territory in 1912. After that, the Aleutian Islands were the site of the Aleutian Islands Campaign during UsefulNotes/WorldWarII (and the only part of the United States to be {{invaded|StatesOfAmerica}} during the war). Known as the "Forgotten Campaign", because it was overshadowed by the simultaneous Battle of Guadalcanal, this chapter of WWII made up in bloodshed what it lacked in significance; After a gruelling and savage winter war that rivalled even the Eastern Front in brutality, the Japanese ended it all with an unexpected mass Banzai charge, one of the largest in the Pacific, which split the American lines into pieces and resulted in a day-long hand-to-hand melee until the 29 Japanese survivors finally surrendered.

And now, for the part you've been waiting for: UsefulNotes/SarahPalin. Yes, she spent a little more than two years as the governor of this state. She's trying to make a political comeback in 2022 by running for (1) the few months remaining in the congressional term of the state's only member of the House of Representatives, who died that March (which she lost) and (2) a full House term later that year. The ''other'' [[Creator/MichaelPalin Palin]] (no, not the former governor's now ex-husband) has also been here. His travelogue series about voyaging all around the Pacific Rim nations featured a visit to Alaska, where at one point he really ''could'' see Russia from the part of Alaska he was standing in. So one Palin really did manage it -- but it wasn't Sarah.

[[caption-width-right:350:''[[Film/NorthToAlaska "Way up nooooorth...."]]'']]

And now, for the part you've been waiting for: UsefulNotes/SarahPalin. Yes, she spent a little more than two years as the governor of this state. She's trying to make a political comeback in 2022 by running for (1) the few months remaining in the congressional term of the state's only member of the House of Representatives, who died that March and (2) a full House term later that year. The ''other'' [[Creator/MichaelPalin Palin]] (no, not the former governor's now ex-husband) has also been here. His travelogue series about voyaging all around the Pacific Rim nations featured a visit to Alaska, where at one point he really ''could'' see Russia from the part of Alaska he was standing in. So one Palin really did manage it -- but it wasn't Sarah.

And now, for the part you've been waiting for: UsefulNotes/SarahPalin. Yes, she spent a little more than two years as the governor of this state. She's trying to make a political comeback in 2022 by running for (1) the few months remaining in the congressional term of the state's only member of the House of Representatives, who died that March and (2) a full House term later that year. The ''other'' [[Creator/MichaelPalin Palin]] (no, not the former governor's husband) has also been here. His travelogue series about voyaging all around the Pacific Rim nations featured a visit to Alaska, where at one point he really ''could'' see Russia from the part of Alaska he was standing in. So one Palin really did manage it -- but it wasn't Sarah.

And now, for the part you've been waiting for: UsefulNotes/SarahPalin. Yes, she spent a little more than two years as the governor of this state. She's trying to make a political comeback in 2022 by running for the few months remaining in the congressional term of the state's only member of the House of Representatives, who died that March. The ''other'' [[Creator/MichaelPalin Palin]] (no, not the former governor's husband) has also been here. His travelogue series about voyaging all around the Pacific Rim nations featured a visit to Alaska, where at one point he really ''could'' see Russia from the part of Alaska he was standing in. So one Palin really did manage it -- but it wasn't Sarah.

[[UsefulNotes/TheUnitedStates America]]'s last true frontier, Alaska is, by a very wide margin, the largest of [[UsefulNotes/TheSeveralStates the 50 states]]. The next competitor for the title, [[EverythingIsBigInTexas Texas]], is less than half its size. If it were [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Alaska_area_compared_to_conterminous_US.svg overlaid over the contiguous 48 states]], then Anchorage, its largest city, would be in Missouri; Utqiaġvik (formerly, and sometimes still called, Barrow), its northernmost town, would be in UsefulNotes/{{Minnesota}}; Ketchikan, its southernmost, would be in UsefulNotes/{{Florida}}; Nome would be in UsefulNotes/SouthDakota; Juneau, the state capital, would be in [[UsefulNotes/GeorgiaUSA]] Georgia; and the Aleutian Islands would stretch all the way into UsefulNotes/{{California}}. Bottom line: Alaska is ''huge''.

[[UsefulNotes/TheUnitedStates America]]'s last true frontier, Alaska is, by a very wide margin, the largest of [[UsefulNotes/TheSeveralStates the 50 states]]. The next competitor for the title, [[EverythingIsBigInTexas Texas]], is less than half its size. If it were [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Alaska_area_compared_to_conterminous_US.svg overlaid over the contiguous 48 states]], then Anchorage, its largest city, would be in Missouri; Utqiaġvik (formerly, and sometimes still called, Barrow), its northernmost town, would be in Minnesota; Ketchikan, its southernmost, would be in Florida; Nome would be in South Dakota; Juneau, the state capital, would be in Georgia; and the Aleutian Islands would stretch all the way into UsefulNotes/{{California}}. Bottom line: Alaska is ''huge''.

But Alaska is also very sparsely populated. As of the 2020 census, there were just over 730,000 human beings living in Alaska, making the state the third least-populated in the nation, outranking only Vermont and Wyoming. And this comes ''after'' a huge population surge in the 2000s (many migrants coming in from California, Oregon, and Washington for economic opportunities) -- in the 2000 and 1990 censuses, Alaska was firmly the second-smallest state by population, just barely ahead of Wyoming. More than half of those people live in only one tiny corner of the state: the Anchorage metropolitan area, with about 40% of the population living in Anchorage itself. The state has, by far, the lowest population density in the country (less than one-fourth that of Wyoming, the state with the second-lowest population density). Part of this likely has to do with the fact that most of Alaska is either [[SlippySlideyIceWorld frozen tundra or forbidding mountains]], something of an American version of Siberia, with only the coastal regions in the south being really hospitable.[[note]]Although in the future, GlobalWarming may push the line between "Cold" and "Oh-god-this-is-fuckin'-freezing!" further north, making the state more welcoming to new arrivals.[[/note]] The lowest temperature ever recorded in the U.S., –80° [[UsefulNotes/AmericanCustomaryMeasurements Fahrenheit]] (–62° Celsius), was taken in Prospect Creek, Alaska, on January 23, 1975.

But Alaska is also very sparsely populated. As of the 2020 census, there were just over 730,000 human beings living in Alaska, making the state the third least-populated in the nation, outranking only Vermont and Wyoming. And this comes ''after'' a huge population surge in the 2000s (many migrants coming in from California, Oregon, and Washington for economic opportunities) -- in the 2000 and 1990 censuses, Alaska was firmly the second-smallest state by population, just barely ahead of Wyoming. More than half of those people live in only one tiny corner of the state: the Anchorage metropolitan area, with about 40% of the population living in Anchorage itself. The state has, by far, the lowest population density in the country. Part of this likely has to do with the fact that most of Alaska is either [[SlippySlideyIceWorld frozen tundra or forbidding mountains]], something of an American version of Siberia, with only the coastal regions in the south being really hospitable.[[note]]Although in the future, GlobalWarming may push the line between "Cold" and "Oh-god-this-is-fuckin'-freezing!" further north, making the state more welcoming to new arrivals.[[/note]] The lowest temperature ever recorded in the U.S., –80° [[UsefulNotes/AmericanCustomaryMeasurements Fahrenheit]] (–62° Celsius), was taken in Prospect Creek, Alaska, on January 23, 1975.

And now, for the part you've been waiting for: UsefulNotes/SarahPalin. Yes, she spent a little more than two years as the governor of this state. The ''other'' [[Creator/MichaelPalin Palin]] (no, not the former governor's husband) has also been here. His travelogue series about voyaging all around the Pacific Rim nations featured a visit to Alaska, where at one point he really ''could'' see Russia from the part of Alaska he was standing in. So one Palin really did manage it -- but it wasn't Sarah.

* There's a moment in George Papashvily's autobiographical novel ''Anything Can Happen'' where he's living with a [[HeroicRussianEmigre White Russian family in Pittsburgh]] and they consider moving to Alaska because [[RussiaCalledTheyWantAlaskaBack it was Russian territory]] and there must still be a lot of Russian speakers there.[[note]]They dismiss George's comment that Tsar Nicholas II sold Alaska to pay his gambling debts, reasoning that if His Majesty had to do that, he'd have explained it to his subjects.[[/note]] The young son likes the idea of learning to drive SledDogsThroughTheSnow while the mother dreams of Alaska as a transplanted bit of pre-Bolshevik Old UsefulNotes/TsaristRussia, with "thick quiet snow", Orthodox churches and peasants with "shining faces". They end up going to California instead.[[note]]Anna's image of Alaska is not entirely wrong. [[https://learningenglish.voanews.com/a/russian-culture-still-alive-in-rural-alaska/3977418.html The village of Nikolaevsk]] is home to a group of Old Believers who fled the Bolsheviks.[[/note]]

* The [[ExtremeSportExcusePlot extreme sports]] comedy ''Film/OutCold'' is set at an Alaskan ski resort.

Alaska was the first place in the Americas that human beings laid eyes on, as the last ice age lowered sea levels enough so that a land bridge, known as Beringia, formed between Alaska and Siberia.[[note]]The remnants of this bridge are the Bering Sea Islands of St. Lawrence, Nunivak, and the Diomedes.[[/note]] The people who crossed Beringia are the ancestors of all the aboriginal tribes of North and South America, from [[InjunCountry the Iroquois and the Sioux]] to [[{{Mayincatec}} the Aztecs and the Inca]]. Some of them, of course, stayed in Alaska. The peoples who settled along the state's long coastline lived off the ample supplies of fish and marine mammals; those in the interior lived off the equally ample supplies of fish in the rivers and large mammals on land. Collectively, they are known as the Alaska Natives, a group that encompasses the Tlingit, the Haida, the Tsimshian, the Aleut, the Yup'ik, the Alutiiq, the Gwich'in, and the Iñupiat.

* Unlike the other 49 states, not all of Alaska is organized into counties (or "parishes" as in Louisiana, or "boroughs" as in Alaska itself). In the "unorganized borough" covering slightly less than half the state, the only local services are municipalities and school boards, with everything else handled directly by the state or by the tribal government. It was originally intended that Alaska would have multiple unorganized boroughs for all the regions that either lacked sufficient population for an organized borough or just didn't want one (the state constitution specifically authorizes such an arrangement) but it was soon realized that it would be simpler to just designate the entire state as the unorganized borough and then carve organized boroughs out of it as needed.[[note]]Oddly enough, the first organized borough wasn't drawn around Anchorage, or even Fairbanks or Juneau, but tiny Bristol Bay with no incorporated towns and a population of less than 1,000. Even stranger, one of the unincorporated towns of Bristol Bay Borough, King Salmon, is the seat of government for ''another borough'', the neighboring (and barely more populous) Lake and Peninsula Borough. This is the only county-equivalent in the United States to have its government seated outside its own borders.[[/note]] There are periodic calls to create more organized boroughs out of the remainder of the unorganized borough, but since so much of it is completely devoid of human residents nothing ever comes of it.

And now, for the part you've been waiting for: UsefulNotes/SarahPalin. Yes, she spent a little more than two years as the governor of this state. [[Administrivia/RuleOfCautiousEditingJudgment Now let's keep discussion about her to a minimum, all right?]] The ''other'' [[Creator/MichaelPalin Palin]] (no, not the former governor's husband) has also been here. His travelogue series about voyaging all around the Pacific Rim nations featured a visit to Alaska, where at one point he really ''could'' see Russia from the part of Alaska he was standing in. So one Palin really did manage it -- but it wasn't Sarah.

* There's a moment in George Papashvily's autobiographical novel ''Anything Can Happen'' where he's living with a [[HeroicRussianEmigre White Russian family in Pittsburgh]] and they consider moving to Alaska because [[RussiaCalledTheyWantAlaskaBack it was Russian territory]] and there must still be a lot of Russian speakers there.[[note]]They dismiss George's comment that Tsar Nicholas II sold Alaska to pay his gambling debts, reasoning that if His Majesty had had to do that he'd have explained it to his subjects.[[/note]] The young son likes the idea of learning to drive SledDogsThroughTheSnow while the mother dreams of Alaska as a transplanted bit of pre-Bolshevik Old UsefulNotes/TsaristRussia, with "thick quiet snow", Orthodox churches and peasants with "shining faces". They end up going to California instead.[[note]]Anna's image of Alaska is not entirely wrong. [[https://learningenglish.voanews.com/a/russian-culture-still-alive-in-rural-alaska/3977418.html The village of Nikolaevsk]] is home to a group of Old Believers who fled the Bolsheviks.[[/note]]