148 Fun Facts About Alaska

Alaska is bigger than the next three largest states combined: Texas, California and which other?

Montana, about 147,000 square miles, is the fourth-largest state; add Texas and California and the three still fall short of Alaska, which could be cut in half and leave Texas in third place.

What is the capital city of Alaska?

Juneau has no road link to the rest of Alaska or North America, so every car and crate arrives by boat or plane; the seat of government moved there from Sitka in 1906.

Which animal, the largest member of the deer family, often wanders through Alaska's towns and suburbs?

Moose look placid, but Alaska's wildlife agency says they injure more people in the state each year than bears do, usually when a cow with a calf or a cornered bull feels threatened.

What is the highest peak in North America, located in Alaska?

Denali is the Koyukon name, which the state of Alaska has pressed since 1975; Washington called the peak Mount McKinley until 2015, adopted Denali, then restored McKinley as the federal name in 2025.

What sled dog race, held every March since 1973, covers roughly 1,000 miles across Alaska?

The Iditarod's architects, Dorothy Page and musher Joe Redington Sr., are remembered as the mother and father of the race; Redington went on to enter it many times himself and never won.

Which whale, a summer regular in Southeast Alaska, is famous for breaching and for bubble-net feeding in groups?

Humpback whales work as a team off Southeast Alaska, circling beneath a school of fish and blowing curtains of bubbles to corral it before lunging up through the middle with mouths open.

The 49-star US flag made for Alaska's statehood stayed official for how long?

One year: the 49-star flag became official on July 4, 1959, but Hawaii became a state that August, so a 50-star flag took its place on July 4, 1960.

What is the name for the midwinter stretch when the sun never rises over Alaska's far north?

Polar night falls on the state's northernmost town in mid-November, when the sun sets and stays below the horizon for about two months, leaving only a few hours of twilight around noon.

The Trans-Alaska Pipeline carries North Slope crude to a marine terminal at which port?

Valdez won the terminal because its harbour stays ice-free all year, so tankers can load in any season the crude that has flowed 800 miles south through the pipe.

Fairbanks sits beneath a ring-shaped zone high in the atmosphere, making it one of the best places to see what?

Northern Lights flare when charged particles from the sun strike gases high in the atmosphere, and they concentrate in the auroral oval, a ring over the far north that passes above Fairbanks.

Which Alaska national park is famous for bears catching salmon at Brooks Falls?

Katmai National Park streams the falls on live webcams, and since 2014 the public has voted each autumn in Fat Bear Week to crown the bear that has packed on the most weight for winter.

What derogatory nickname did critics give the 1867 purchase of Alaska?

Seward's Folly was one of several jibes from newspapers and opponents who called the land useless, alongside 'Seward's Icebox' and 'Walrussia'; the opposition faded after the Klondike gold strike of 1896.

Which country's forces occupied the Alaskan islands of Attu and Kiska for about a year during World War II?

Japan seized the two islands in June 1942; when American and Canadian troops stormed Kiska in August 1943 they found it empty, because the garrison had slipped away by sea weeks earlier.

During the summer solstice, approximately how many hours of daylight does Fairbanks, Alaska experience?

Fairbanks gets about 21 hours and 49 minutes of direct sunlight on the summer solstice, plus extended twilight that makes it never truly dark. Only locations above the Arctic Circle experience a full 24-hour midnight sun.

Which species is the largest Pacific salmon, prized by anglers on Alaska's Kenai River?

Chinook, better known in Alaska as king salmon, grow so large because they can spend several years feeding at sea before returning to their home rivers to spawn.

Most of the deaths in Alaska's magnitude 9.2 Good Friday earthquake of 1964 were caused by what?

Tsunamis did most of the killing: waves raised by the lurching seabed and by undersea landslides hit Alaskan ports within minutes, and others crossed the ocean to drown people in Oregon and California.

Which Alaskan city hosted the start of the Klondike Gold Rush supply route and boomed in the late 1890s?

Skagway boomed as the port at the foot of the White Pass, and the narrow-gauge railway built from its docks during the rush still hauls visitors up the pass today.

Who designed Alaska's state flag, with the Big Dipper and North Star on dark blue?

A teenage schoolboy, Benny Benson, entered an American Legion contest from a children's home in Seward; the legislature adopted his design, and it was kept unchanged when Alaska became a state.

Which North Slope oil discovery of 1968 triggered construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline?

Prudhoe Bay, the largest oil field in North America, lies some 800 miles from the nearest harbour that stays ice-free all year, which is why its discovery forced the building of the pipeline.

Which tidewater glacier is the main attraction for cruise ships sailing to the head of Glacier Bay?

Margerie Glacier was joined to its neighbour, Grand Pacific, until 1992; that glacier has since receded behind mudflats, leaving Margerie's towering ice cliff as the showpiece of the bay.

What is the primary material of traditional Tlingit totem poles?

Red cedar is highly rot-resistant, which is why carvers prized its tall, straight trunks; even so, the rainy coastal climate eventually decays every pole left standing outdoors.

Which biome covers most of Alaska's North Slope, between the Brooks Range and the Arctic Ocean?

Tundra has no forest because bitter cold and a short growing season stunt tree growth, and the soil below stays frozen year-round; dwarf shrubs, sedges, mosses and lichens take the trees' place.

Which Alaskan volcano erupted in 1912, creating the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes?

Novarupta produced the largest eruption of the 20th century, yet until the 1950s a neighbouring mountain got the blame: so much magma drained from beneath it that its summit collapsed into a caldera.

What is Alaska's yearly payment to residents from its invested oil royalties called?

The Permanent Fund Dividend is paid from a savings fund Alaskans voted to create in 1976, knowing the oil wealth would not last forever; cheques have ranged from $331 in 1984 to $3,284 in 2022.

What is the largest US National Park Service area, an Alaskan expanse about the size of Croatia?

Wrangell-St. Elias covers 13.2 million acres, as much as Yellowstone, Yosemite and Switzerland combined; within it stands Kennecott, a copper boomtown that emptied in 1938, when the ore ran out and the last train left.

Which lead sled dog finished the 1925 serum run and got a statue in Central Park?

Balto ran only the last leg of the relay, yet ten months later he was in New York for the unveiling of his own statue; Togo, whose team covered the longest stretch, drew far less press at the time.

In which Alaskan body of water did an Exxon supertanker run aground in 1989, causing a notorious oil spill?

Prince William Sound was fouled when the tanker struck Bligh Reef just after midnight; in response Congress passed the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, which phased in double hulls for oil tankers.

What price did the United States agree to pay Russia for Alaska in 1867?

$7.2 million worked out at about two cents an acre; Russia was ready to sell because the remote colony would be hard to defend against Britain, its great rival, in any future war.

What is the rough length of Alaska's tidal shoreline, counting every island, inlet and fjord?

34,000 miles is NOAA's figure once every island, inlet and fjord is traced: far more than a lap of the Earth's equator, because the coast is so deeply cut and so thickly studded with islands.

Among the Tlingit and other peoples of the Northwest Coast, what is a potlatch?

A gift-giving feast: the host of a potlatch wins standing by giving wealth away instead of hoarding it, a custom Canada outlawed for more than sixty years, until 1951.

What is the northernmost spot in the United States, a headland on Alaska's Arctic coast?

Point Barrow was the jumping-off point for the 1928 flight across the Arctic Ocean to Spitsbergen; seven years later aviator Wiley Post and humorist Will Rogers died in a crash about 20 miles away.

Which glacier ends about 12 miles from downtown in Alaska's capital, a short bus ride from the cruise docks?

Mendenhall Glacier has retreated about 1.75 miles since 1929, and the lake at its foot exists only because of that retreat; researchers have tracked the shrinking ice since 1942.

Which Alaskan was the longest-serving Republican U.S. senator in history when he left office in 2009?

Ted Stevens held his seat for 40 years, then lost it in 2008 just days after a corruption conviction that was thrown out the next spring, when the Justice Department admitted its prosecutors had mishandled the case.

McNeil River State Game Sanctuary protects the world's highest concentration of which animal?

Brown bears crowd McNeil River Falls each summer to catch salmon, as many as 74 at a time, so Alaska's wildlife agency caps visitor numbers through a permit programme to keep the gathering undisturbed.

An ulu, sold as a souvenir all over Alaska, is a traditional Native tool of what kind?

A knife with a broad, crescent-shaped blade and the handle set above it: Inuit and Yupik women used the ulu for everything from skinning animals and cutting food to trimming a child's hair.

What were the elaborate ceremonial masks of western Alaska's Yupik traditionally carved from?

Wood was the usual material; for all the carving and painting that went into them, most masks were discarded or destroyed once the ceremony they were made for was over.

Which waterway south of Anchorage has 40-foot tides that can rush in as a single bore wave?

Turnagain Arm's incoming tide forms a wave that surfers can ride for minutes at a time, and at low water the arm drains to mudflats that grip like quicksand.

Which glacier, the largest in North America, is named for a Danish navigator who sailed for Russia?

Bering Glacier, counted with the Bagley Icefield that feeds it, is the continent's largest; Vitus Bering's 1741 voyage, on which he died, was the one that brought Russia to Alaska.

In 1978 the route of Alaska's great sled dog race became one of the first four of what?

National Historic Trails were a brand-new category in 1978; Alaska's entry joined the Oregon, Mormon Pioneer and Lewis and Clark routes, in honour of the dog teams that once hauled freight to the gold camps.

Mukluks, traditionally sewn from sealskin or caribou hide by Alaska's Arctic peoples, are what?

Soft boots: the word comes from the Yupik maklak, the bearded seal, whose name outsiders took to mean sealskin and then applied to the footwear made from it.

Which huge protected area in northeastern Alaska has seen decades of debate over drilling on its coastal plain?

The Arctic Refuge's coastal plain is where the Porcupine caribou herd gives birth each year; Congress ordered lease sales there in 2017, yet the first, in January 2021, drew bids on only half the tracts offered.

Which Seward Peninsula town boomed after the 'Three Lucky Swedes' struck gold nearby in 1898?

Nome's stampede took off when gold turned up in the beach sand itself, where anyone could dig without staking a claim; by the 1900 census it was the largest community in Alaska.

In a contest dating from 1917, Alaskans buy tickets to guess the exact minute of what springtime event at Nenana?

The river ice breaking up: a striped tripod planted on the frozen Tanana is wired to a clock that stops the moment the ice carries it off, a game begun by survey engineers betting among themselves.

The Chilkat preserve, with the world's most bald eagles, is near which Alaskan town?

Haines is the gateway: up to 4,000 bald eagles crowd the Chilkat River flats each autumn, on top of a few hundred residents, and they can be watched from the roadside along the Haines Highway.

Which 1896 Russian Orthodox church in Unalaska is among the oldest in Alaska?

Holy Ascension Cathedral, finished in 1896, probably stands on the site of the 1826 church Ioann Veniaminov built and reused some of its timbers and an iconostasis; a Russian post existed at Unalaska by 1778.

Who became the first musher to win Alaska's 1,000-mile sled dog race six times, in 2024?

Dallas Seavey's sixth win broke his tie with Rick Swenson, and it came despite a two-hour penalty: he had shot an animal that attacked his team on the trail and was judged not to have gutted it properly.

What geographic oddity does the western end of the Aleutian chain hold?

Part lies in the Eastern Hemisphere because the chain crosses the 180th meridian, which makes Alaska the easternmost US state by longitude as well as the westernmost and northernmost.

What was Sitka's Russian name when Alaska was formally handed to the United States?

New Archangel, named after the northern Russian port of Arkhangelsk, was the capital of Russian America; the flag-changing ceremony held there on October 18, 1867 is still marked every year as Alaska Day.

The name Alaska comes from an Aleut idiom, alaxsxaq, meaning what?

The mainland, or more literally 'that toward which the action of the sea is directed': Russians first used the name for the Alaska Peninsula alone, and it later spread to the whole territory.

What does Alaska, which has no counties, call its local government divisions?

Boroughs cover only about half of Alaska: the rest, an area bigger than Texas, is the Unorganized Borough, which has no county-level government at all.

Which Southeast Alaska fishing town celebrates its Scandinavian roots as 'Little Norway'?

Petersburg is named for Peter Buschmann, the Norwegian immigrant who built its first cannery; icebergs drifting from a nearby glacier gave the fish packers a ready supply of ice.

The Anton Anderson Memorial Tunnel is the only road into which isolated Alaskan port town?

Whittier's 2.5-mile tunnel is a single lane shared with trains, so cars pass through in convoys that swap direction every half hour; almost everyone in town lives in one 14-story building.

Which Anchorage lake, beside the international airport, is often billed as the world's busiest seaplane base?

Lake Hood averages about 190 takeoffs and landings a day and has hundreds of small planes based on it, though Vancouver's harbour aerodrome disputes its 'world's busiest' billing.

Which other state, besides Alaska, levies neither a sales tax nor an individual income tax?

New Hampshire is the only other state with neither; Alaska manages it because oil revenue and federal money pay most of the state's bills, though dozens of its towns charge a local sales tax of their own.

What is the official state song, adopted in 1955, of the 49th state?

It celebrates the flag with its Big Dipper and North Star, designed by a schoolboy.

Which river's delta near Wrangell draws one of North America's largest spring gatherings of bald eagles?

The Stikine's delta fills with bald eagles each spring because they come to gorge on the run of eulachon, a small oily smelt that swarms into the river to spawn.

Akutaq, sometimes called Alaskan ice cream, is traditionally whipped up from berries and what?

Animal fat, such as caribou tallow or seal oil, is whipped until light and folded with berries and often shredded dried fish, so this 'ice cream' traditionally contains no dairy at all.

Which Southeast Alaska city bills itself the 'Salmon Capital of the World'?

Ketchikan grew up on its salmon canneries; Creek Street, the boardwalk strung along the creek at the heart of town, spent the first half of the 20th century as a notorious red-light district.

Alaska's farms are concentrated on the Kenai Peninsula and in which area northeast of Anchorage?

The Matanuska Valley was settled in 1935 by 203 Depression-hit farm families from Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan under a New Deal scheme; today it is famous for the giant cabbages shown at the state fair.

Who was elected Alaska's first female governor in 2006, at the age of 42?

Sarah Palin got there by beating the sitting governor, Frank Murkowski, in her own party's primary; two years later she was John McCain's running mate, and she resigned the governorship in 2009.

Which Alaskan town near Fairbanks has a Kris Kringle Drive and candy-cane streetlights?

North Pole got its name in 1952, when developers bought a homestead and renamed it in the hope of attracting a toy manufacturer; its post office now receives hundreds of thousands of letters to Santa every year.

Which singer-songwriter grew up yodeling with her father on a homestead near Homer?

Jewel Kilcher grew up in a house with no indoor plumbing and later lived in her car while playing small gigs; her debut album, Pieces of You, then went 12-times platinum.

Talkeetna's honorary mayor from 1997 to 2017 was what kind of creature?

A cat named Stubbs held the title from kittenhood until his death, with a general store as his office; the popular story that voters elected him is a legend, since the town has no real mayor and held no election.

Which breed was named Alaska's official state dog in 2010?

The Alaskan Malamute was bred by the Malimiut Inupiaq to haul heavy freight, built for power where the Siberian Husky is built for speed; the University of Washington's 'husky' mascot is in fact a malamute.

The crab boats of TV's Deadliest Catch sail from which Aleutian port?

Dutch Harbor became America's biggest fishing port on the king crab boom of the 1970s; the crab harvest crashed in 1982, yet the port still lands more seafood by volume than any other in the country.

Which bloom is Alaska's official state flower?

Forget-me-not blue is written into the state flag: its dark blue field stands for the Alaska sky and for this flower, which the territory had adopted back in 1917.

Which 1942 US Army road links Dawson Creek, British Columbia, with Delta Junction?

The Alaska Highway was cut through the wilderness in 1942 as a wartime supply route by more than 10,000 Army engineers, about a third of them Black soldiers serving in newly formed regiments.

Which bird, mottled brown in summer and white in winter, has been Alaska's state bird since 1955?

The willow ptarmigan breaks the family rule: in most grouse only the hen raises the young, but the male helps feed and guard the brood and may take over completely if the female dies.

Which bay in southwest Alaska hosts the world's largest sockeye salmon fishery?

Bristol Bay's rivers hold the most abundant sockeye runs on Earth; to protect them, the EPA in January 2023 effectively vetoed the huge Pebble copper and gold mine proposed in the watershed.

Which Alaskan island is the second-largest island in the United States?

Kodiak Island, slightly larger than Cyprus, held the first capital of Russian Alaska: fur traders moved their base to its harbour in 1792, and the town of Kodiak grew from that post.

Which president signed the act that made Alaska the 49th state?

Dwight Eisenhower signed it on July 7, 1958, after a decade of statehood bills, some backed by Harry Truman, had stalled against opposition from powerful southern congressmen.

What name did the city of Barrow officially adopt in December 2016?

Utqiaġvik is the older Iñupiaq name, referring to a place for gathering wild roots; residents voted in a 2016 referendum to restore it in place of the name outsiders had used for more than a century.

Which 414-mile road runs from north of Fairbanks to Deadhorse on the Arctic coast?

The Dalton Highway began as the pipeline builders' supply road, pushed through in five months of 1974; it is still mostly gravel, and it featured in several seasons of TV's Ice Road Truckers.

Into which body of water does the 1,980-mile Yukon River, Alaska's longest, empty?

The Bering Sea receives the Yukon through a wide delta, far from the British Columbia glacier where it rises; paddle-wheel riverboats worked the river until the 1950s, when a new highway took their trade.

What state motto did Alaska adopt in 1967 after a 1963 contest drew 761 entries?

North to the Future was journalist Richard Peter's entry, which won him $300; the phrase was meant to cast the young state as a land of promise and opportunity.

Anchorage began in 1915 as a tent city at the mouth of Ship Creek during construction of what?

The Alaska Railroad made the camp its construction base; President Warren Harding came north to drive the golden spike in July 1923 and died on the journey home less than three weeks later.

In 2020 the Army National Guard airlifted which famous object out of the Alaska bush?

An abandoned city bus, Bus 142, was where Christopher McCandless starved in 1992; after his story drew hundreds of hikers a year and two drowned at a river crossing, the state flew it out to a museum.

Who in 2022 became the first Alaska Native elected to Congress?

Mary Peltola, a Yup'ik former tribal judge, won the seat left open by Don Young's death, beating two better-known Republicans in an upset; she lost it in 2024 to one of them, Nick Begich III.

In 2010 Lisa Murkowski won re-election to the US Senate by which method, last managed in 1954?

By write-in campaign: she had lost her party's primary, so more than 100,000 Alaskans wrote her name on the ballot by hand; Strom Thurmond, in 1954, was the last senator to win that way before her.

The Yukon Quest sled dog race traditionally ran 1,000 miles between Fairbanks and which Canadian city?

Whitehorse and Fairbanks swapped start and finish each year from 1984; after border closures cancelled the 2021 race, the Alaskan and Canadian organisers split and now run shorter races on their own sides.

Operation Breakthrough, dramatized in the 2012 film Big Miracle, rescued which animals in 1988?

Gray whales, three of them, were trapped by pack ice off Alaska's north coast; the youngest died, and two Soviet icebreakers cut a channel for the others, though nobody knows whether the pair survived.

The tallest wave ever recorded stripped trees 1,720 feet up Alaska's Lituya Bay in 1958; what set it off?

A rockslide of some 40 million cubic yards, shaken loose by a powerful earthquake, plunged into the head of the bay; five people died, but a fisherman and his seven-year-old son rode the wave out and lived.

Who checked Klondike stampeders at the top of the Chilkoot Pass, turning back anyone without a year's supplies?

The North-West Mounted Police enforced Canada's rule that every stampeder bring about a ton of goods, a year's food among them, to prevent starvation; carrying it over the pass took many trips.

The Hurricane Turn train near Talkeetna is one of the last in the US of what type?

Flag-stop means there are no fixed stations: anyone along the line north of Talkeetna can wave a white cloth beside the track and the train will stop to pick them up.

In 1989 a KLM 747 lost all four engines near Anchorage after flying into ash from which volcano?

Mount Redoubt's ash melted inside the engines into a glassy coating that shut all four down; the nearly new 747 dropped more than 14,000 feet before the crew got engines restarted and landed safely.

Russia's Big Diomede, 2.4 miles from Alaska's Little Diomede, is nicknamed what?

Tomorrow Island lies just across the International Date Line from its neighbour, 'Yesterday Island', so its clocks run 20 or 21 hours ahead, depending on the season: from the Alaskan side you can look across the water at the next day.

Which 18,008-foot peak on the Yukon border is the second-highest in both the US and Canada?

Mount Saint Elias can rank second in two countries because the border runs right across its summit, officially Boundary Peak 186; it rises its whole height within about ten miles of the sea.

Alaska's 1945 Anti-Discrimination Act, passed 19 years before the federal Civil Rights Act, is credited to which Tlingit activist?

Elizabeth Peratrovich was the last to testify when the bill reached the territorial Senate, and her speech is credited with carrying it; in 2020 the US Mint put her likeness on a $1 coin.

TV's Northern Exposure, set in Cicely, Alaska, was mostly shot in which Washington town?

Roslyn, an old coal-mining town in the Cascades, stood in for Cicely; its Brick Tavern, the oldest continuously operating bar in the state, featured prominently, and fans have boosted tourism ever since.

Who served as the first governor of Russian America, from 1799 to 1818?

Alexander Baranov ran the Russian-American Company's colony for nearly two decades; he won Sitka back from the Tlingit in an 1804 battle and made it his capital, and Baranof Island still carries his name.

Admiralty Island's Tlingit name, usually translated 'Fortress of the Bears', gave English which slang word?

Hooch is short for hoochinoo, a liquor distilled by the island's Tlingit, whose own name outsiders spelled Hoochinoo; the clipped form caught on in the 1890s.

Which shaggy Arctic animal, reintroduced to Alaska in the 1930s, yields qiviut, a wool softer than cashmere?

Muskox had vanished from Alaska by the 1920s, so every one there today descends from 34 animals shipped from Greenland in 1930; their underwool is combed or gathered as it sheds, never sheared.

Alaska's 1955 constitutional convention deliberately seated 55 delegates to match which earlier gathering?

The 1787 Philadelphia convention had 55 framers, and Alaska copied the number on purpose; its delegates met on the university campus near Fairbanks to escape the lobbyists of the territorial capital.

In Alaska and the Yukon, a seasoned old-timer has been nicknamed after which gold-rush staple since 1898?

Sourdough became the name for an old hand because prospectors kept a pouch of live starter on a belt or round the neck, where ordinary yeast and baking soda were unreliable in the cold.

Hyder, an Alaskan town reachable by road only through Canada, borrows what from its British Columbia neighbour?

Its area code: Hyder is so cut off from the rest of Alaska that its phones run through the exchange in Stewart, British Columbia, two miles up its only road, where residents also shop and have sent their children to school.

Kake's giant totem pole, one of the world's tallest, was carved to mark what occasion?

The Alaska Purchase centennial of 1967 was the occasion; the pole stands in a community whose villages the US Navy destroyed in 1869, two years after the purchase, an act the Navy formally apologised for in 2024.

What is the sheltered sea route that cruise ships and state ferries follow through the islands of Southeast Alaska?

The Inside Passage weaves behind a screen of islands, so ships avoid the worst open-ocean weather; state ferries run along it because many of the towns on the way have no road out.

What is the term for slabs of ice breaking off the face of a tidewater glacier, a highlight of Alaska cruises?

Calving happens as waves and tides undercut the ice front until blocks as tall as 200 feet crash into the sea; the icebergs they become serve as resting places for harbor seals and seabirds.

Which painter first saw the snowy peaks of his landscapes while stationed in Alaska with the Air Force?

Bob Ross spent 20 years in the Air Force and started out selling Alaskan landscapes painted on novelty gold-mining pans.

Which Old West lawman ran the Dexter Saloon in a gold-rush boomtown in western Alaska around 1900?

Wyatt Earp joined the 1899 gold rush with Josephine Marcus, opened the Dexter with partner Charlie Hoxie and made an estimated $80,000.

Kobuk Valley National Park in roadless northwest Alaska was created to protect which unexpected landform?

Sand dunes up to 100 feet high rise there, the remains of fields that spread over some 200,000 acres just after the Ice Age glaciers retreated.

Which environmental group grew out of a 1971 protest voyage against nuclear tests on Alaska's Amchitka Island?

Greenpeace began as the Don't Make a Wave Committee, whose chartered ship was forced to turn back by a US Coast Guard vessel before it reached the test site.

On April Fools' Day 1974, prankster Porky Bickar faked an eruption of Alaska's Mount Edgecumbe by burning what?

Old tires, 70 of them soaked in kerosene, were flown into the dormant crater by helicopter, and the words April Fool were spray-painted around the rim in 50-foot letters.

Which vegetable, grown to a world-record 138 pounds in 2012, stars in a famous weigh-off at the Alaska State Fair?

Cabbage has had its own contest at the fair since 1941, when a 23-pounder won the $25 prize; Scott Robb's 138.25-pound giant of 2012 set the world record.

In the Nenana Ice Classic, a lottery dating from 1917, Alaskans bet on the exact minute of what event?

A river's spring breakup settles it: when the Tanana's ice goes out it drags away a tripod planted on the surface, tripping a line that stops a clock on shore.

Which American humorist died with aviator Wiley Post when their plane crashed in northern Alaska in 1935?

Will Rogers was one of Hollywood's higher-paid film stars when Post's floatplane crashed on takeoff from a lagoon on the North Slope.

Which sport is played in Fairbanks, Alaska, every summer solstice around midnight without any artificial lights?

Baseball's Midnight Sun Game was first played in 1906; it starts around 10:30 in the evening, ends about 1:30 in the morning and has never used artificial light.

Which insect, whose adults feed mainly on mosquitoes, gnats and midges, is Alaska's official state insect?

Dragonfly, specifically the four-spot skimmer, a species named for the spots on its wings; its underwater larvae eat other insect larvae and even tadpoles.

The 1925 sled dog serum run across Alaska raced antitoxin to a town threatened by which disease?

Diphtheria antitoxin crossed 674 miles in five and a half days, handed along a relay of 20 mushers and about 150 dogs.

Homer, Alaska, has long billed itself as the fishing capital of the world for which giant flatfish?

Halibut made Homer's name, and its harbour sits on the Homer Spit, a narrow gravel bar reaching 4.5 miles into the bay; the town's other nickname is the end of the road.

Which animal's Porcupine herd migrates over 1,500 miles a year across northeast Alaska and Canada?

Caribou of the Porcupine herd make the longest land migration of any land mammal, and the Gwich'in people traditionally sited their communities along the route.

Which animal's pelt, judged the finest fur in the world, first drew fur traders to Alaska's coast in the 1740s?

Sea otter fur is the densest of any animal, with up to 150,000 hairs per square centimetre, and hunting between 1741 and 1911 cut the world population to as few as 1,000.

Alaska was the newest US state for less than eight months before which other state was admitted?

Hawaii gained statehood in August of the same year, so the 49-star Stars and Stripes made for Alaska was official for only a year before a 50th star went on.

Which Disney heroine was voiced in a 1995 animated film by Alaska-born actress Irene Bedard?

Pocahontas got her speaking voice from Bedard, who was born in Alaska's largest city and went on to play Suzy Song in the 1998 film Smoke Signals.

Which author of the sagas Texas, Chesapeake and Poland published the 868-page historical novel Alaska in 1988?

James Michener opens the book before any people arrive, with a chapter on how the continent was formed, then follows several interlinked families across the centuries.

Which actor played musher Leonhard Seppala in Togo, Disney's 2019 film about Alaska's 1925 serum run?

Willem Dafoe plays Seppala opposite the sled dog of the title, and the film flashes between the musher raising him and their part in the relay.

Kennecott, a ghost-town mining camp in Alaska, once sat on the world's richest known deposit of which metal?

Copper gave itself away in 1900, when two prospectors spotted a green patch high above them that looked like a meadow and turned out to be malachite ore.

North America's strongest recorded earthquake struck Alaska in 1964 on which day of the Christian calendar?

Good Friday fell on March 27 that year, and the shaking began at 5:36 in the evening and went on for four minutes and thirty-eight seconds.

Fairbanks, Alaska, is named for an Indiana senator who went on to hold which office under Theodore Roosevelt?

Vice President Charles W. Fairbanks served from 1905 to 1909, and the gold camp took his name at the urging of Wickersham, the judge who later moved a district court there.

Which US president became the first to visit Alaska, on a 1923 tour that ended with his sudden death?

Warren Harding spoke to a crowd of 1,500 in Fairbanks in 94-degree heat on the trip, and died in San Francisco on August 2 before he could finish the tour.

Who represented Alaska as its only member of the US House for 49 years, from 1973 until 2022?

Don Young lost his first race in 1972 to an incumbent whose plane had vanished weeks before the vote, then won the special election of March 1973.

Which Alaska senator joined Oregon's Wayne Morse as the only two votes against the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution?

Ernest Gruening, known as the father of Alaska statehood, had been the territory's governor from 1939 to 1953 before becoming one of its first two senators.

In Alaska's 1,000-mile sled dog race, which award goes to the last musher to cross the finish line?

Red Lantern honours mark the final finisher's perseverance, while a separate Widow's Lamp hangs lit on the finish arch until that last team is in.

Which Scottish-born naturalist made seven trips to Alaska from 1879 and has a Glacier Bay glacier named after him?

John Muir explored Glacier Bay in 1879 with a missionary and Native guides, and his writing about the area stirred interest in preserving it.

Which con man, who had run crime rings in Denver and Creede, was shot dead in a gold-rush Alaska port in 1898?

Soapy Smith got his nickname selling bars of soap said to hide prize money, a racket that helped bankroll all three of his criminal empires.

A jay, a sea eagle and an extinct sea cow are named for which German naturalist who reached Alaska in 1741?

Georg Steller is counted among the first non-natives to set foot on Alaskan soil, and he was the first European naturalist to describe the jay that carries his name.

Which teenager, the first Alaskan to swim at an Olympics, won 100-metre breaststroke gold at the Tokyo Games?

Lydia Jacoby was 17 and broke away over the final 20 metres to upset the defending champion, her own American teammate, in 1:04.95.

Which US president, impeached the following year, was in office when the United States bought Alaska in 1867?

Andrew Johnson was mired in fights over Reconstruction and hoped the deal would divert attention from troubles at home; the Senate approved the treaty by 37 votes to 2.

Which seabird nests on Alaska's coasts in two species, the horned and the tufted, with a third in the Atlantic?

Puffin species of the North Pacific are the horned and the tufted; the horned has the largest bill of any of them, red at the tip and yellow at the base.

The sled dog command mush, heard all over Alaska, is thought to come from a marching order in which language?

French is the usual suggestion: mush may be a worn-down form of marchons, a call to march, and it turns up in English spelled mouche by 1862.

Alaska's Marine Highway, serving coastal communities that have no road access, is a state-run fleet of what?

Ferries cover about 3,500 miles of routes, running as far south as Bellingham in Washington state, and the system counts as part of the National Highway System.

Which rock band behind the 2017 hit Feel It Still was started by friends from Wasilla High School in Alaska?

Portugal. The Man grew from the partnership of singer Gourley and bassist Zach Carothers, who began playing together in 2001; the hit later won them a Grammy.

Which 2002 Christopher Nolan thriller sends Al Pacino's Los Angeles detective to a small Alaska town to solve a murder?

Insomnia remakes a 1997 Norwegian film; Pacino's Los Angeles detective, in Nightmute to solve a murder, is kept awake by guilt and the perpetual daylight.

A body buried in permafrost at Brevig Mission, Alaska, yielded in 1997 the genetic material of which pandemic virus?

Spanish flu RNA was recovered from the lung tissue of an Iñupiat woman exhumed by Johan Hultin's team; in 1918 the virus had killed 72 of the village's 80 residents in five days.

In 1896 a gold prospector named North America's highest peak after which presidential candidate?

William McKinley was only a candidate when the prospector picked the name to show support for him, and the federal government made it official in 1917.

Which physicist, the so-called father of the hydrogen bomb, backed a 1958 plan to blast a harbour in Alaska?

Edward Teller toured Alaska promoting Project Chariot, which would have buried and set off a string of nuclear devices at Cape Thompson; local opposition got it quietly shelved.

HAARP, an Alaska research site that conspiracy theorists tie to weather control, studies which atmospheric layer?

Ionosphere research is its purpose: the programme probes the highest, ionized part of the atmosphere and was first meant to improve radio communications and surveillance.

Which country singer topped the country chart with the theme song to John Wayne's 1960 film North to Alaska?

Johnny Horton also took the song to number four on the Hot 100, and it plays over the film's opening titles to fill in the backstory.

Poker Flat, near Fairbanks, Alaska, is the world's only university-owned range for launching what?

Sounding rockets lift off from the 5,132-acre site, which the University of Alaska Fairbanks owns and runs under contract to NASA.

Alaska's Mount Marathon Race, which legend says began as a bar bet, is traditionally run on which holiday?

Fourth of July was the date local merchants suggested when they donated prizes for the first organised run in 1915; the turnaround is a stone marker 2,974 feet above the sea.

Which aviator, who led the 1942 bombing raid on Tokyo, spent his boyhood in a gold-rush town in Alaska?

Jimmy Doolittle spent his youth there and earned a local reputation as a boxer, decades before the raid that carries his name.

The University of Alaska Fairbanks calls its sports teams the Nanooks after which animal's Inupiaq name?

Polar bear is the meaning of nanuq, the Inupiaq word that the Nanooks name is derived from.

During World War II, US pilots delivered Lend-Lease warplanes to Fairbanks, Alaska, for onward flight to which ally?

Soviet Union crews trained at Ladd Field to take over the American-built planes, then flew them across Siberia toward the fighting fronts.

Which Ice Age animal survived on Alaska's St. Paul Island until about 5,600 years ago?

Woolly mammoth numbers on St. Paul were small, yet they outlasted the mammoths of the rest of Alaska, gone about 13,300 years ago, by more than 7,000 years.

Which actor plays the Alaskan assistant forced into a fake engagement with Sandra Bullock in The Proposal?

Ryan Reynolds plays the put-upon assistant, whose Alaskan hometown was actually filmed on the other side of the continent, in Rockport and Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts.

Which US House majority leader vanished with an Alaska congressman on a 1972 flight across the state?

Hale Boggs, who had sat on the commission that investigated the Kennedy assassination, was on a fundraising trip when the twin-engine plane disappeared; neither wreckage nor remains were ever found.

Who in 1913 became the first person to stand on the summit of North America's highest peak, in Alaska?

Walter Harper reached the top ahead of guide Harry Karstens, missionary Robert Tatum and Hudson Stuck, the archdeacon who had organised the climb.

Which 2007 horror film, starring Josh Hartnett as a sheriff, unleashes vampires on Alaska's northernmost town?

30 Days of Night takes its title from the month-long winter darkness that hides the attackers, who speak an invented language devised with a linguistics professor.