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Alaska has been called the world’s last great wilderness, an untamed expanse of imposing mountain ranges and immense forests where bear and caribou roam free. Easily the largest state in the U.S., Alaska is also by far its least densely populated, a land of wide-open spaces and eternal summer sunshine. Aptly dubbed The Last Frontier, Alaska is a wonderland rich in natural resources, where just about everyone makes their living from the environment in one way or another.

Alaska, like the Americas as a whole, was likely first populated by settlers crossing the Bering Land Bridge. While most of these migrants continued further south and east into the continent, Alaska was settled by the Inupiaq, Inuit and Yupik Eskimos, Aleuts, and a variety of other Native American groups. Russians were the first Europeans to reach Alaska, making it a colony in 1744. The Spanish also explored the coast and founded a few settlements whose memory still remains in place names such as Valdez and Cordova.

Fearful of Canadian expansion in the North, the United States bought Alaska from Russia in 1867 for $7.2 million (an unpopular purchase at the time that became known as “Seward’s Folly”). The land of the midnight sun became the 49th U.S. State in 1959. Less than 1% of the land in Alaska is under private ownership, with 65% administered by the federal government, 24.5% under state control and 10% owned by regional or local Native corporations.

Most of the population is centered in fairly large cities on the Alaskan panhandle (home to the capital, Juneau) and in the coastal southern regions (Anchorage, Fairbanks). The vast, sparsely populated northern and western regions are primarily inhabited by Alaska Natives, who are also numerous in the southeast. While tourism may be the state’s most rapidly growing industry, oil, coal, timber, and fisheries still form the backbone of the economy.

Alaska’s geography is dominated by mountain ranges, most notably the Brooks and Alaska-Aleutian Ranges, and the rivers and lakes they spawn. Where the ground isn’t covered in permafrost, sweeping forests also characterize the Alaskan wilds. The most notable symbol of the Alaskan wilderness is Denali (formerly Mt. McKinley), which towers over the rest of North America at over 20,000 feet.

The climate in Alaska varies greatly, as befits such a large state, from the maritime zones on the peninsula and southern coast (where the weather is akin to the Pacific Northwest) to the continental center (where temperatures can range from -40° in winter to over 80° in summer) to the arctic zone around Barrow in the far north, where the temperature barely gets above freezing in the summer.

Alaska is a vast open land distinguished by the richness and variety of it flora and fauna. A land of mountains and lakes that’s nearly half the size of the rest of the United States, the Last Frontier is one of the last truly wild places on the Earth, a mystical place that lives up to its nickname in every way.