Personal blog about states
19
The U.S. state of Alaska is divided into 19 organized boroughs and one Unorganized Borough. Alaska and Louisiana are the only states that do not call their first-order administrative subdivisions counties (Louisiana uses parishes instead ).
Russia offered to sell Alaska to the United States in 1859, believing the United States would off-set the designs of Russia’s greatest rival in the Pacific, Great Britain. The strategic importance of Alaska was finally recognized in World War II. Alaska became a state on January 3, 1959.
Alaska is located in the north-western part of Canada. Alaska is the largest state of the United States by area. As you can see on the given Alaska state map, it is non-contiguous state situated extreme north-west of North America continent.
At 663,300 square miles, Alaska is by far the largest state in the United States , nearly two and a half times as large as Texas. In the case of many map projections, Alaska appears to be more than half the size of the lower 48 states, when in reality the continental US is 4.7 times as large.
A 2017 cost of living study by the Anchorage Economic Development Corporation shows that overall monthly utility costs in Alaska are quite high. In fact, natural gas and electricity bills are 33% higher than the national average in Alaska .
Louisiana was officially Roman Catholic under both France and Spain’s rule. The boundaries dividing the territories generally coincided with church parishes. In 1807, the territorial legislature officially adopted the ecclesiastical term.
In addition to Louisiana and Alaska having no counties, there are two states, Connecticut and Rhode Island , that are divided into geographic regions called counties, but those counties do not have functioning governments, as defined by the Census Bureau.
Use of the term “borough” was a controversial part of Alaska’s Constitutional plan and debated at length by the delegates. It was adopted largely to avoid legal and political connotations of the traditional county. Alaska’s boroughs were intended to be more versatile and powerful than counties .
There are two main reasons. First, Canada wasn’t its own country in 1867. Second, Great Britain controlled the Canadian colonies. Russia did not want to sell Alaska to its rival.
The Bering Strait tunnel was estimated to cost between $10 billion and $12 billion, while the entire project was estimated to cost $65 billion. Shortly after, the Russian government approved the construction of the $65 billion Siberia- Alaska rail and tunnel across the Bering Strait.
Crime in the U.S. state of Alaska is exceptionally high and is present in various forms. Crime rates in Alaska are among the highest in the U.S.
On a clear day, you could climb a hill on Cape Prince of Wales and maybe make out mainland Siberia, just fifty miles away. But it’s much easier to get a view of Russia view by heading out into the Bering Strait to one of America’s weirdest destinations: Little Diomede Island.
If you call Alaska home, chances are you’re less worried about your safety on a daily basis than people who live in other states. Alaska’s property crime rate is 33 per 1,000, compared to the national average of 22.0. Alaska’s violent crime rate is 8.9 per 1,000 people, one of the highest crime rates in the country.
July