What Is Alaska's Largest City?

What is Alaska’s largest city?  By population, Alaska’s largest city is Anchorage, with 278,700 inhabitants.  This is an estimate by the United States Census Bureau for the year 2006. Alaska’s largest city by surface area is Yakutat City and Borough, which 9,459.28 square miles in size.

Anchorage is Alaska's largest city with 278,700 in population. The next largest cities are:

• Fairbanks North Star Borough with 31,142
• Juneau with 30,737
• Sitka with 8,920
• Matanuska-Susitna 9,236

Anchorage is located in the south central part of Alaska between Cook Inlet and the Chugach Mountains, and south of Mount McKinley or Denali.

Climate

What is life like in Alaska's largest city? The climate is subarctic, but the ocean breezes moderate the temperature.  Average temperatures in the summer are between 55 and 78 degrees F, and daytime temperatures in the winter average between 5 and 30 degrees F.  Precipitation averages 16 inches a year and snowfall averages almost 60 inches. 

History and Environment

Anchorage started as a railroad construction camp in 1914.  It grew during World War II and the pipeline construction days of the 1970s.  It has been named All-American City four times by the National Civic League and was named the most tax-friendly city in the United States. 

If you like the rugged outdoors, you would love Anchorage.  It has the nation’s 3rd largest state park, Chugach State Park.  There are many opportunities for fishing, hiking, biking, exploring, or just enjoying nature.  You can go whale watching or snow skiing.  Just don’t be surprised to find a moose in your front yard when you wake up.  

Yakutat, Alaska

Yakutat is the largest city in Alaska by surface area with 9,459.28 square miles. Land makes up 7,650.46 square miles of its area and 1,808.82 square miles of its water area.  Yakutat is larger than the state of Delaware.

The second largest city by area is Sitka, with 4,811.5 square miles and Juneau, with 3,255.0 square miles, is third.  On a list of largest cities in the world by surface area, Yakutat comes in 11th.    

Yakutat is a classic example of an overbounded city, which means the boundaries are far away from human development.  It has glaciers and ice fields that will never be developed areas.  Only about 800 people live in all of Yakutat, which is located in the lowlands of the Gulf of Alaska.  Yakutat is home to the longest tidewater glacier in Alaska, the Hubbard Glacier.  It is 76 miles long and its calving face, which is where the ice breaks off to form icebergs and other icy objects, is 6 miles wide. 

Yakutat contains all or part of these protected areas:

• Glacier Bay National Park
• Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve
• Tongass National Forest
• Chugach National Forest
• Glacier Bay Wilderness
• Russell Fjord Wilderness
• Wrangell-St. Elias Wilderness 

State of Alaska

Now that you know what Alaska's largest city is, you might also be interested in some other facts about the state:

• Alaska became the 49th state on January 3rd, 1959.
• Its nickname is The Last Frontier.
• It is the only capital in the United States that has no road access.  To get there, you have to travel by boat or plane.
• The area of Alaska is 586,412 square miles, which is two and a half times bigger than Texas.
• The population of Alaska is 626,932 and it is abbreviated AK.  
• It has the most glaciers in the nation with more than 29,000 square miles of them.
• It has the tallest mountain in North America, Mount McKinley at 20,320 feet.
• One special Alaskan holiday is Seward’s Day on March 27th.  This is the day in 1867 that Alaska was bought from Russia for $7.2 million by Secretary of State William Seward.
• The other holiday special to Alaskans is Alaska Day, which commemorates the transfer of the territory when the US flag was raised in Sitka on October 18, 1867.
• The motto of Alaska is “North to the Future” and the flag, which was selected with a contest between students from grades 7 to 12, is eight gold stars on a blue field.  The stars are arranged like the Big Dipper and the North Star.

State symbols include:   

• Flower - Forget-me-not
• Fish - King Salmon
• Bird - Ptarmigan
• Tree - Sitka Spruce
• Mineral - Gold
• Gem - Jade
• Sport - Dog Mushing
• Insect - Dragonfly
• Fossil - Woolly Mammoth