Ask Mapman
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Can you stump our cartographer?
The Relative Size of Alaska
and the Lower 48 States
ALASKA:
1.2 inhabitants
per square
mile
WYOMING:
5.8 people
per square
mile
Fairbanks
CALIFORNIA
AL
EUTI
ND
AN ISLA
NEW JERSEY:
At 1,195.5 people
per square mile,
the Garden State
is the most densely
populated state.
Anchorage
Attu is the westernmost
island of the
Aleutian Islands.
Juneau
S
SOUTH
CAROLINA
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Census 2010
Scale of miles
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500
A JS reader asks: Which state is the least densely populated?
map: jim mcmahon/mapman™
A
laska is the least densely populated state in
the U.S. According to the new figures from the
2010 Census, it has an average of 1.2 inhabitants
per square mile. Wyoming, which averages 5.8 people
per square mile, is the next least populated.
Nicknamed the Last Frontier, Alaska has an estimated
population of 710,230. Alaskans live in a land area
that covers 587,878 square miles—that is more than
twice the size of Texas. The majority of Alaska’s
population is clustered in and around the cities of
Anchorage and Fairbanks. The remaining residents live
in communities spread across a vast terrain that includes
about 1,800 islands, 33,000 miles of shoreline, half of
the world’s glaciers, and more than 3 million lakes.
How big is the Last Frontier? Alaska is so large that
if you were to superimpose it on a map of the lower 48
states, as above, it would stretch from the coast of South
Carolina to California. Indeed, if Alaska were a country,
it would rank as the world’s 19th-largest in land area.
—Jim McMahon, aka Mapman
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[email protected]. If we publish your question, you’ll receive a free JS T-shirt!
February 7, 2011 • JUNIOR SCHOLASTIC online reproducible
Uses: copy machine, opaque projector, or transparency master for overhead projector. Scholastic Inc. grants teacher-subscribers to Junior Scholastic permission to reproduce this Skills Reproducible for use in their classrooms. Copyright ©2011 by Scholastic Inc. All rights reserved.
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