Maps lie. Honestly, they have to. Trying to flatten a giant, curved rock like Earth onto a rectangular piece of paper or a smartphone screen is a mathematical nightmare that involves some pretty heavy compromises. If you’re looking for a map of the United States with Hawaii and Alaska, you’ve probably noticed that things usually look a little... weird. Most of the time, our two non-contiguous states are shoved into tiny little boxes in the bottom left corner, floating somewhere off the coast of Mexico or California. It’s convenient for printing posters, sure, but it completely breaks our sense of scale.
Think about it.
Alaska is absolutely massive. It is twice the size of Texas. Yet, on a standard classroom wall map, it often looks roughly the same size as Montana because it’s been scaled down to fit in that little inset window. And Hawaii? It’s not just a tiny cluster of dots. It’s a 1,500-mile chain of islands that would stretch from Florida to Maine if you laid it out across the East Coast. When we look at a map of the United States with Hawaii and Alaska in those little boxes, we lose the reality of how big this country actually is.
Why the Inset Box is a Big Lie
Cartographers—the people who actually make maps for a living—call those little squares "insets." They are a necessary evil. If you tried to create a map of the United States with Hawaii and Alaska in their true geographic positions relative to the "Lower 48," your map would be mostly empty ocean. You’d have a huge cluster of states on the right, a tiny speck for Hawaii thousands of miles to the southwest, and Alaska way up in the top left corner. You’d be paying for a lot of blue ink and very little land.
The problem is that our brains start to believe the map. People genuinely grow up thinking Alaska is an island near San Diego because that’s where the map put it.
There's a famous story among geographers about a visitor to the National Meteorological Center who asked why the weather in Hawaii and Alaska was always so different when they were "right next to each other" on the wall. They weren't joking. That is the power of visual representation. When you use a map of the United States with Hawaii and Alaska that relies on insets, you are looking at a collage, not a snapshot.
The Scale Struggle
If you want a map that actually shows scale, you have to look at something like the Mercator projection, which has its own set of massive problems. In a Mercator map, things get stretched the further they are from the equator. This makes Alaska look like it's the size of the entire continental U.S., which is also wrong.
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Actually, Alaska is about 665,400 square miles. Texas is roughly 268,600 square miles. You can fit Texas into Alaska twice, and you’d still have enough room left over to shove in a few New England states. But because of the way we box things up, we lose that "wow" factor. We forget that Juneau is closer to Seattle than it is to many parts of Western Alaska.
Where Hawaii Actually Sits
Hawaii is the most isolated population center on Earth. That is a wild fact that most people ignore. It is roughly 2,400 miles from California.
When you see a map of the United States with Hawaii and Alaska, Hawaii is usually tucked right under Arizona or California. In reality, if you were to fly from Los Angeles to Honolulu, you’re looking at a five-to-six-hour flight over nothing but water. By moving Hawaii into a little box, maps strip away the sheer logistical insanity of how the U.S. functions as a trans-pacific nation.
It’s also worth noting that Hawaii isn’t just the eight main islands we see on postcards. The Hawaiian archipelago includes 137 islands, most of them uninhabited, stretching way out into the Pacific. Most maps don’t even bother showing the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands because, again, they wouldn't fit in the box.
The Alaska Problem: It's Not Just North
Alaska is so big that it spans four time zones (though the state mostly uses one for simplicity). It has a coastline that is longer than all the other 49 states combined. When we look at a map of the United States with Hawaii and Alaska, we often miss the Aleutian Islands.
Did you know that part of Alaska is technically in the Eastern Hemisphere?
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The Aleutian Islands cross the 180th meridian. This means that, technically, Alaska is the northernmost, westernmost, and easternmost state in the Union. You won’t see that on a standard classroom map. They usually just cut the Aleutians off or curve them unnaturally to stay within the frame.
Digital Maps vs. Paper Maps
Google Maps and Apple Maps have kind of solved this, but they’ve also made it worse. On a digital globe, you can see the true distance. You can zoom out and see the massive gap of Canada and the Pacific Ocean. But we rarely do that. We search for a route, and the app zooms in on our specific path.
We’ve lost the "big picture" perspective that paper maps used to give us.
Even the U.S. Census Bureau struggled with this for decades. How do you present data for all 50 states in a way that people can actually read? If you make the map large enough to show everything to scale, the smaller states like Rhode Island or Delaware become literally invisible.
Choosing the Right Map for the Job
So, which map of the United States with Hawaii and Alaska should you actually use? It depends on what you're doing.
- For Data Analysis: Use a cartogram. These maps distort the size of states based on variables like population. In a cartogram, New Jersey might look bigger than Alaska because way more people live there.
- For Education: Use a map that at least includes a "scale bar" for the insets. If Alaska is in a box, that box should have its own scale so you can see it’s been shrunk by 50% compared to the rest of the map.
- For True Perspective: Use a globe. Seriously. There is no flat map that can accurately show the relationship between Honolulu, Anchorage, and Washington D.C. without distorting something.
The Cultural Impact of the Map
This isn't just about geography geeks complaining. It’s about how we perceive our country.
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When Alaska and Hawaii are marginalized in small boxes, they feel like "extra" parts of the U.S. rather than integral pieces. This has real-world consequences. People in the Lower 48 often forget that shipping to Alaska or Hawaii isn't "international," yet companies treat it that way. Policy decisions are often made with the "Lower 48" in mind, ignoring the unique geographical challenges of the two states that aren't attached to the main landmass.
A Better Way to Look at It
Next time you see a map of the United States with Hawaii and Alaska, try a little mental exercise.
Take Alaska out of its box. Slide it up. Place it over the Midwest. It would stretch from the Great Lakes all the way down to the Texas panhandle. Now take Hawaii. Place it on the East Coast. The island chain would cover the distance from Washington D.C. to at least the edge of Missouri.
Suddenly, the "United" part of United States feels a lot more expansive.
The most "accurate" flat maps usually use something called the Albers Equal-Area Conic projection. This is what the USGS (U.S. Geological Survey) uses. It keeps the area of the states accurate relative to one another, even if the shapes get a little skewed at the edges. But even then, they almost always resort to those little inset boxes for Alaska and Hawaii because, let's be honest, nobody wants a map that is 70% empty ocean hanging on their wall.
Actionable Steps for Map Users
If you are buying a map or using one for a project, don't just grab the first one you see. Follow these steps to ensure you aren't being misled by a box:
- Check the Scale: Look for maps that explicitly state the scale of the insets. If Alaska's box doesn't have a scale bar, it's likely been shrunk to fit an aesthetic, not a reality.
- Compare Overlays: Use online tools like "The True Size Of" to drag Alaska and Hawaii over other states. It’s a reality check that will ruin your perception of standard maps forever.
- Prioritize Equal-Area Projections: If you are comparing things like forest cover, population density, or land use, always ensure you are using an "Equal-Area" map so the visual weight matches the actual landmass.
- Use Globes for Distance: Never use a flat map to estimate how long a flight or shipping route will take from the mainland to Honolulu or Anchorage. The "Great Circle" route on a globe is the only way to see the true path.
Geography is more than just lines on a page. It's about understanding the space we occupy. When we look at a map of the United States with Hawaii and Alaska, we are looking at a puzzle that cartographers have been trying to solve for over a century. The "box" isn't going away anytime soon, but at least now you know what's actually going on inside it.
The United States is a massive, sprawling, geographically diverse entity that defies being flattened. Accept the distortion, but don't let it fool you. Alaska is huge, Hawaii is far, and the boxes are just there to save on paper.