This post is part of our ongoing Alaska FAQ series, answering commonly asked questions about the state.
Short answer: Really, really big. To many travelers from Europe and the rest of the world, the United States can seem dauntingly large, and that’s just the lower 48 states. Alaska is by far the largest of the 50 US states, and we’ve compiled a list of facts on Alaska’s size that should help explain just how massive the Great Land really is:
- Total land area: 663,268 square miles (1,717,854 sq. km.)
- More land area than the 2nd, 3rd and 4th biggest states combined
- More land area than the 22 smallest states combined
- More miles of coastline than the other 49 states combined
- If Alaska was a country, it would be the 19th largest in the world
- Because of the Aleutian Island chain, Alaska is over 2,200 miles wide from end to end, more than the distance from Madrid to Cairo.