Why so many forget Alaska is the largest state
Ok so this is something… unusual for me to talk about, but something I figured I’d randomly throw up here because I’ve had it come to my mind a few times.
Alaska. It makes X-Box look small. Heck it makes our 48 continental states look small. But unfortunately not enough people in the US realize this. And I have a few reasons why I believe this is forgotten.
First, let us remember how the US is often pictured in general. 48 states. Alaska and Hawaii are often simply not pictured. So very often, it’s not even in somebody’s mind. When it’s not seen enough during childhood, it becomes harder to reinforce.
Secondly, and even more importantly: How are Alaska and Hawaii represented when pictured on a map of just the US? Very often: In a corner showing “oh we have these two states here as well but they’re elsewhere”. Hawaii is represented not too terribly different than its actual size. But how about Alaska? Well, it’s nowhere near as big as it should be. It’s probably approximately 1/4 to 1/2 of its actual size in general. If Alaska was properly represented and put in the upper middle of the US, the main land would cover most or all of North and South Dakota, Minnesota, Nebraska and Iowa, the back part of the state covering half of half of Wisconsin, Illinois and Missouri. The back tail would go through Kentucky, Tenessee and stop in Northern Georgia, and the front tail of islands would extend to the California coast!
Also if you actually positioned it right, if the Western most portion of the state was in San Francisco, California, the Eastern most portion of the state would be in Jacksonville, Florida!
So what ends up happening as a child is you don’t get a decent visualization of how big it is compared to the US. So you think it’s smaller than Texas. Another fact that is usually not pointed out is that its Eastern border is shared with the entire Western border of the Yukon Territory and by part of British Columbia!
So I think really that while our children are starting to learn how big Alaska really is, a lot of adults that didn’t look into it just
… Not to mention that Adults that weren’t in school after the 60s may not have even SEEN Alaska in their text books.