THE GENERAL GEOGRAPHY OF ALASKA 



By Henry Gannett, Chief Geographer, United States 



Geological Survey 



ALASKA, our northernmost pos- 

 session, extends over more than 

 20 degrees of latitude and 45 

 degrees of longitude — as far as from 

 Florida to Maine and from Maine to 

 Utah. * From the main body of the Ter- 

 ritory stretch two projections, one to the 

 southeast, comprising the Alexander 

 Archipelago and the adjacent mainland, 

 the other to the southwest, comprising 

 the Alaska Peninsula and the Aleutian 

 Islands. 



The exact area of Alaska cannot at 

 present be known, owing to the fact that 

 the boundaries are as yet located only 

 approximately. The seacoast, which 

 forms by far the greater part of the 

 boundary, has not been accuratelj^ 

 mapped, except in small part, while the 

 land boundary on the southeast, which 

 separates our territory from Canada, has 

 not been defined, except in the general 

 terms of the treat)^ of cession from Rus- 

 sia. Various measurements have been 

 made, based upon different maps, giving 

 areas ranging from 570,000 to 600,000 

 square miles. A careful recent meas- 

 urement from the large map published 

 by the U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey 

 (scale 1:1,200,000) gives its area as 

 590,884 square miles. Of this the por- 

 tion lying east of the 141st meridian, 

 popularly known as southeastern Alas- 

 ka, which is the best known part of the 

 Territory, has an area of 43,710 square 

 miles, of which 30,800 square miles con- 

 sist of mainland and 12,910 square miles 



*It lies between latitudes 51° and 71° 30^, 

 extending 5 degrees within the Arctic Circle, 

 and stretches from longitude 130° to 175°. The 

 great body of the Territory lies, however, be- 

 tween latitudes 60° and 71° 30^, and between 

 longitude 141° and 168°. 



of islands, forming w^hat is known as 

 the Alexander Archipelago. 



The Cordillera of North America 

 enters Alaska at its southeastern ex- 

 tremity and follows the Pacific coast 

 around to the Aleutian Islands. Beyond 

 this mountain sj^stem and following its 

 general trend is a broad depression, 

 drained by the Yukon River and its 

 tributaries. North of this basin is a 

 height of land w^hich separates the 

 Yukon Valley from the bleak shores of 

 the Arctic Ocean. 



THE PACIFIC COAST REGION 



This portion of the Territory is moun- 

 tainous throughout. Although the 

 coast of the mainland and of the islands 

 is, altogether, several thousand miles in 

 length, yet for the entire distance there 

 are very few square miles of level 

 ground. The land rises from the water 

 almost ever}' where at steep angles, with- 

 out a sign of beach, to altitudes of thou- 

 sands of feet. It is a fiord coast. The 

 islands are separated from one another 

 and from the mainland by fiords, deep 

 gorges, whose bottoms are in some cases 

 thousands of feet below the surface of 

 the water. These fiords extend far up 

 into the mainland and into the islands, 

 in deep, narrow U-shaped inlets. 



The relief features of this region, its 

 mountains and its gorges, partl)^ filled 

 by the sea, are all of glacial origin, pre- 

 senting everywhere the familiar hand-; 

 writing of ice. Everj^ cafion, every 

 water passage, whether called strait, 

 canal, or bay, is a U-shaped gorge, and 

 its branches are similar gorges com- 

 monly at higher levels — " hanging val- 

 leys " they have been called. Above 



