Honestly, if you ask most people to name the biggest state in the country, they’ll probably hesitate for a second before picturing a massive, dusty ranch in the South. Texas has this huge, "everything is bigger" personality that makes it feel like it must be the champion. But it isn’t. Not by a long shot. When you actually look at the data for which state is the largest state in USA, the winner is Alaska, and it’s basically in a league of its own.
Texas is big. Alaska is just... absurd.
To put it into perspective, you could fit Texas inside Alaska twice and still have enough room left over to shove in a good chunk of California. People always talk about "Texas-sized" things, but in the North, they have a saying: "If you cut Alaska in half, Texas would become the third-largest state." It’s a bit of a jab, but the math actually backs it up.
The True Scale of the 49th State
Let's look at the hard numbers because they’re kind of mind-blowing. Alaska covers about 665,384 square miles of total area. Texas, coming in at a very respectable second place, sits at roughly 268,597 square miles.
Do the math and you’ll realize Alaska is more than double the size of the Lone Star State. In fact, Alaska accounts for about one-fifth of the entire landmass of the United States. If you laid a map of Alaska over the "lower 48," it would stretch all the way from the coast of Georgia to the coast of California. It touches both the Arctic and the Pacific. It's so wide that it technically spans enough longitude to be the northernmost, westernmost, and—thanks to the Aleutian Islands crossing the 180th meridian—the easternmost state in the country.
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Why Does It Look Smaller on Maps?
If you’re looking at a standard map in a classroom or on a generic website, you might be thinking, "Wait, it doesn't look that much bigger."
That’s because of something called the Mercator projection. It's a way of flattening the globe onto a 2D surface that distorts things as you get closer to the poles. Since Alaska is so far north, it often gets stretched out or, conversely, gets shoved into a tiny little box in the bottom corner of the map next to Hawaii. This makes people underestimate its sheer bulk. In reality, it’s a giant.
Which State is the Largest State in USA? The Top 5 Contenders
While Alaska takes the gold medal without breaking a sweat, the rest of the leaderboard is still pretty interesting. Most of the massive states are out West, where the horizons just seem to go on forever.
- Alaska: 665,384 square miles. The undisputed king.
- Texas: 268,597 square miles. The largest in the contiguous U.S.
- California: 163,696 square miles. Huge, but mostly known for its population.
- Montana: 147,040 square miles. They call it "Big Sky Country" for a reason.
- New Mexico: 121,590 square miles. A massive desert landscape that often gets overlooked.
It’s funny because California has the most people—nearly 40 million—but it’s only the third largest by land. Alaska, on the other hand, has more than 660,000 square miles but only about 733,000 residents. That’s roughly one person per square mile. If Manhattan had the same population density as Alaska, only about 16 people would live on the entire island.
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Water, Ice, and Coastline
When we talk about which state is the largest state in USA, we aren't just talking about dirt and rocks. A huge part of Alaska's "total area" involves water.
The state has over 3 million lakes. That's not a typo. It has about 3,000 rivers, including the mighty Yukon, which is the third-longest in the country. And the coastline? It’s staggering. Alaska has 6,640 miles of coastline, which is more than all the other 49 states combined. If you include all the islands and inlets, that number jumps to over 33,000 miles.
Then there are the glaciers. About 5% of the state is covered in ice. There are an estimated 100,000 glaciers here, including the Malaspina Glacier, which is bigger than the entire state of Rhode Island.
The "Seward’s Folly" Backstory
It’s wild to think that the U.S. almost didn’t buy this land. Back in 1867, Secretary of State William Seward negotiated the purchase from Russia for $7.2 million. At the time, people thought he was an idiot. They called it "Seward’s Icebox" and "Seward’s Folly."
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They thought it was just a frozen wasteland with zero value. Then they found gold. Then they found oil. Today, Alaska is one of the most resource-rich places on the planet. Beyond the gold and oil, the fishing industry there provides a massive portion of the seafood for the rest of the world. It turns out $7.2 million—which worked out to about two cents per acre—was probably the greatest real estate deal in human history.
Life on a Massive Scale
Living in the largest state isn't like living anywhere else. Because the place is so big and the terrain is so rough, most of it isn't even connected by roads.
Juneau, the capital, is a "landlocked" city in the sense that you cannot drive there. You have to take a boat or a plane. This has created a unique culture of bush pilots. Alaska has about six times as many pilots per capita as the rest of the U.S. If you want to get groceries in some of the remote villages, you aren't hopping in a minivan; you’re waiting for a Cessna to land on a gravel strip.
Actionable Tips for Visualizing and Visiting the Giant
If you're planning to visit or just want to understand the scale of which state is the largest state in USA, keep these things in mind:
- Don't try to see it all in one trip. You wouldn't try to "see the East Coast" in four days. Alaska is bigger than that. Pick a region—like the Inside Passage or the Interior—and stick to it.
- Use the "True Size" tool. There are websites like The True Size Of that let you drag Alaska over your home state on a map. It’s the best way to cure the "Mercator distortion" in your head.
- Respect the density. Remember that help is often hours, if not days, away. If you're venturing off the beaten path, you need real survival gear. This isn't a regional park; it's a wilderness that could fit several European countries inside it.
- Check the sunlight. Because it's so big and so far north, the "Midnight Sun" is real. In Utqiaġvik (formerly Barrow), the sun doesn't set for 82 days in the summer. Conversely, it doesn't rise for over two months in the winter.
Alaska remains the final frontier. It’s a place where nature still calls the shots and humans are just visiting. Texas might have the bravado, but Alaska has the acreage.