You’ve seen it a thousand times. Probably ten thousand. You open a textbook or look at a weather app, and there it is: a map of the United States showing Alaska tucked neatly into a tiny little box down by Mexico. It’s sitting there right next to Hawaii, looking about the same size as Texas, maybe even smaller. It’s convenient. It’s clean.
It’s also a total lie.
Alaska is huge. Like, mind-bogglingly big. If you actually laid a true-to-scale Alaska over the Lower 48, the state would stretch from the coast of Georgia all the way to California. Its northernmost point would hit the Canadian border, and the Aleutian Islands would be dipping their toes in the Pacific off the coast of Mexico. But we don't see that on most maps because, honestly, it’s a design nightmare. Cartographers have a "problem," and that problem is that the U.S. is an awkward shape for a rectangular piece of paper.
The Inset Box and the Death of Proportionality
When you look at a standard map of the United States showing Alaska, you’re usually looking at a compromise. Most maps use an Albers Equal Area Conic projection for the contiguous states. It’s great for showing the "Mainland" without too much distortion. But Alaska is so far north that if you kept it in its actual geographic position, the map would have to be twice as tall. You’d have a massive amount of "empty" space—mostly Canada—filling up the middle.
To save paper and screen real estate, we stick Alaska in a box.
The issue? That box almost always shrinks the state. If you look closely at a National Geographic map or a high-end atlas, they might include a scale bar specifically for the inset. Most casual maps don’t. We’ve been conditioned to think Alaska is a cute little add-on rather than a landmass that constitutes about one-fifth the size of the entire contiguous U.S. Think about this: Alaska has more coastline than all other 49 states combined. That’s not a typo. Between the Arctic Ocean, the Bering Sea, and the Gulf of Alaska, you're looking at roughly 6,640 miles of coastline. If you include islands, it jumps to over 33,000 miles. When you see that tiny rectangle at the bottom left of a map, you aren't seeing that complexity. You're seeing a thumbnail.
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Why the Mercator Projection Makes Things Even Weirder
On the flip side of the "tiny box" problem is the Mercator problem. You know the one. It’s the map on every classroom wall since the 1500s. Because the Mercator projection stretches things out as you move toward the poles, Alaska starts looking like a monster.
On a Mercator map, Alaska looks roughly the same size as Brazil. In reality, Brazil is about five times larger than Alaska.
This creates a weird psychological disconnect. We either see Alaska as a tiny square in the Pacific or a giant white blob that’s larger than the continental U.S. Neither is true. Finding a map of the United States showing Alaska in its "true" relative size is surprisingly difficult because it requires a massive amount of vertical space.
It's basically a geographic ego check. We want the map to fit our screens, so we warp reality to make it work.
The Texas Comparison
People in Texas love to talk about how big Texas is. And it is big! You can drive for twelve hours and still be in Texas. But Alaskans have a joke: "If you don't stop complaining, we'll cut Alaska in half and make Texas the third-largest state."
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It’s a fair threat.
Alaska is approximately 663,300 square miles. Texas is about 268,597 square miles. You can fit Texas into Alaska twice, with enough room left over to shove in a few New England states. When you see a map that puts them in side-by-side boxes of the same size, it’s doing a massive disservice to the sheer scale of the North.
The Real Logistics of Mapping the Last Frontier
Mapping Alaska isn't just about drawing lines. It’s about the fact that parts of the state are still being "discovered" in a digital sense. Because of the rugged terrain and constant cloud cover, high-resolution satellite imagery has historically been harder to get for the Aleutians than for, say, downtown Chicago.
Geographical names are a whole other mess. For decades, maps labeled the highest peak in North America as Mount McKinley. It wasn't until 2015 that the federal government officially recognized the name Denali, which is what the Koyukon Athabaskan people had called it for thousands of years.
When you look for a map of the United States showing Alaska, you’re also seeing a history of colonialism and indigenous displacement. A "complete" map should show the 229 federally recognized tribes in Alaska. Most don't. They show highways—of which there are surprisingly few—and major cities like Anchorage, Fairbanks, and Juneau.
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Speaking of Juneau, did you know you can't drive there? It’s the state capital, but there are no roads connecting it to the rest of the state. You take a plane or a boat. If you look at a map and see a dot for Juneau, it looks just like the dot for Des Moines. But the physical reality of that dot is completely different. One is a hub in a grid of asphalt; the other is a mountain-locked outpost accessible only by sea and air.
Practical Ways to Visualize the Scale
If you actually want to understand what you're looking at, stop looking at flat maps for a second. Go to a site like The True Size Of. You can drag Alaska over the United States and see the distortion disappear.
- The East-West Stretch: Drag Alaska so the Aleutian Islands hit Southern California. The "Panhandle" (where Juneau is) will be somewhere near Savannah, Georgia.
- The North-South Depth: Put the bottom of Alaska on the Texas-Mexico border. The top of the state will reach all the way to the Canadian border in North Dakota.
- The Island Chain: The Aleutian Islands alone span about 1,200 miles. That’s roughly the distance from New York City to Miami.
Most people use a map of the United States showing Alaska to plan trips or learn basic geography, but the "box" method fails anyone trying to understand travel times. In Alaska, you don't measure distance in miles; you measure it in hours or "bush plane hops."
The Digital Shift: How Google Maps Changed Our Perspective
The move from paper to digital has helped, but only a little. When you scroll around on a digital globe, the scale stays relatively consistent. However, the moment you zoom out to see the "whole country," the software often defaults back to that familiar 2D projection that makes Alaska look like a distant, distorted cousin.
We’re starting to see better "orthographic" views—basically digital globes—that allow you to rotate the Earth. This is the only way to truly see the relationship between Alaska and the rest of the country. You realize that Alaska isn't "off to the side." It’s the gateway to the Arctic. It’s the reason the U.S. is an Arctic nation.
Actionable Steps for Better Map Literacy
If you’re a teacher, a traveler, or just someone who likes not being wrong, here is how you should approach your next encounter with a map of the United States showing Alaska:
- Check the Scale Bar: If there is an inset box, look for a secondary scale bar. If it’s not there, assume Alaska has been shrunk by at least 50% to fit the layout.
- Use a Globe for Reference: Whenever you're looking at flight paths or global politics (like how close Alaska actually is to Russia—about 2.4 miles at the closest point between Big Diomede and Little Diomede), use a 3D globe. Flat maps lie about the Arctic.
- Acknowledge the Inset: Explicitly tell yourself (or your kids) that the box is a "zoom out" or "relocation" for convenience. Alaska belongs way up and way to the left.
- Look for Topographical Maps: Because Alaska is so mountainous, a flat "political" map doesn't tell the story. A topographical map shows why those "short" distances on the map take three days to traverse by snowmobile or boat.
The "box" isn't going away. It's too useful for graphic designers who need to fit 50 states onto a t-shirt or a postcard. But being aware of the "box" is the difference between knowing where a state is and actually understanding the vastness of the American landscape. Alaska is a giant hiding in plain sight, usually tucked away in the corner of the page where we least expect to find a wilderness that could swallow half of Europe.