By Emma Hudson
Why a One Word Answer Is Not Enough
The answer is a single word: Alaska. That answer is correct and stable. No recount or reasonable change of method will put another state ahead of Alaska, because the gap between first and second place is enormous. But the single word hides what “size” means, how much of Alaska is water, why Texas answers a slightly different question, and why two honest sources can print different numbers for the same state without either being wrong.
This article gives the official figures, explains the three ways of measuring a state, works through comparisons that make Alaska’s scale possible to picture, and looks at what fills all that space. It also clears up the usual confusions: largest by area is not largest by population, largest overall is not largest in the contiguous United States, and a coastline is not a single fixed length. The value of a full article here is not the first sentence. It is the method, the comparisons, the geography, and the history, with every figure tied to a named source.
How State Size Is Measured
A state does not have one size. It has at least three, and which one you pick changes some rankings, even though it never changes the winner.
Total area is land plus water. Land area is land only, with water removed. Water area is the lakes, rivers, and coastal waters inside the state boundary. The Census Bureau’s state area table, the source for the figures in this article, counts water in a specific way worth knowing. Its water figures include only perennial water, meaning water present year round. Intermittent water, glaciers, and marsh or swamp land are counted as land in that table, not as water. That matters in Alaska, where ice fields cover a large area. In the Census table, a glacier counts toward land area, even though a reader picturing “land” might picture solid ground.
The table states that its measurements are for statistical purposes, with state boundaries as of January 1, 2010, and classifications reflecting updates through August 2010. Later Census releases revise these figures slightly as mapping improves, so a figure a few hundred square miles either side of 665,384 is a different vintage of the same measurement, not a contradiction. One square mile equals 2.58998811 square kilometers, the Census conversion, so rounding in either unit creates further small differences. Every area figure below comes from the same Census table, so the parts add up. Where another source is used, the article says so.
A second source of confusion is the coastline. The State of Alaska itself gives three different numbers, each correct under its own method: 6,640 miles point to point, 33,904 miles of shoreline on the most detailed maps including islands, and an estimated 47,300 miles of tidal shoreline including inlets. The more closely you trace every bay, inlet, and island, the longer the line gets. That is a property of measuring a wiggly edge, not an error, and it is why this article quotes coastline figures only with their method attached.
The Official Figures: Alaska at the Top
On the Census Bureau’s figures, Alaska’s total area of 665,384 square miles is about 17.5 percent of the total area of the United States including the District of Columbia: roughly one sixth of the country, and about one fifth the size of the 48 contiguous states taken together. Its water area of 94,743 square miles is itself larger than the total area of most American states, and it makes up about 14.2 percent of Alaska’s total area.
Texas, in second place, has a total area of 268,596 square miles, a land area of 261,232 square miles, and a water area of 7,365 square miles. Alaska’s total area is about 2.5 times the total area of Texas, and its land area is about 2.2 times the land area of Texas. California is third, at 163,695 square miles in total, followed by Montana, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, Oregon, and Wyoming. All ten of the largest states by total area lie west of the Mississippi River, a pattern that reflects how the western states were drawn: large, with straight survey lines across thinly settled land, rather than carved out of older colonial settlements in the east.
| Rank by total area | State | Total area (sq mi) | Land area (sq mi) | Water area (sq mi) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Alaska | 665,384 | 570,641 | 94,743 |
| 2 | Texas | 268,596 | 261,232 | 7,365 |
| 3 | California | 163,695 | 155,779 | 7,916 |
| 4 | Montana | 147,040 | 145,546 | 1,494 |
| 5 | New Mexico | 121,590 | 121,298 | 292 |
| 6 | Arizona | 113,990 | 113,594 | 396 |
| 7 | Nevada | 110,572 | 109,781 | 791 |
| 8 | Colorado | 104,094 | 103,642 | 452 |
| 9 | Oregon | 98,379 | 95,988 | 2,391 |
| 10 | Wyoming | 97,813 | 97,093 | 720 |
Two features deserve attention. First, Alaska is the only state in the top ten with a large water share. New Mexico, Arizona, and Colorado are each more than 99 percent land, while Alaska, shaped by seas on three sides and by a long island chain, is far wetter in share terms. Second, the ranking method matters even when the winner does not change: Alaska leads on total and land area alike, but states below it move when water is counted differently.
At the other end of the scale, Rhode Island is the smallest state by both total area and land area, at 1,545 square miles in total, of which 1,034 square miles is land and 511 square miles is water. Alaska’s total area is more than 430 times the total area of Rhode Island, and its land area is more than 550 times Rhode Island’s land area. Delaware, at 2,489 square miles in total, is the second smallest state, followed by Connecticut and New Jersey. The District of Columbia, at 68 square miles, is smaller than any state, but it is not a state, so it does not appear in the state ranking. The same applies to the territories: Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa, and the Northern Mariana Islands are not states, and none of them enters the contest for largest state.
Land Area Versus Total Area: Why the Distinction Matters
For the top spot, land area and total area give the same answer. Alaska wins both, by a wide margin. For understanding the rest of the country, the distinction matters a great deal.
Michigan is the best example. By total area, Michigan is a large state, at 96,714 square miles, just outside the top ten. By land area, it is only 56,539 square miles, because 40,175 square miles of its total is water, mostly in the Great Lakes. That water share, about 41.5 percent of its total, is the highest water share of any state. A reader who only sees total area will picture Michigan as much bigger, in land terms, than it is. A reader who only sees land area will miss how much of Michigan is tied to water. Both figures are true, and neither alone tells the full story.
Florida (65,758 square miles total, 12,133 water) and Louisiana (52,378 total, 9,174 water) show the same effect on a smaller scale. Hawaii is the extreme case: its total area of 10,932 square miles shrinks to a land area of only 6,423 square miles once its surrounding waters are removed. None of this changes the largest state answer, but it changes how any ranking should be read. Whenever a source gives a state size without saying whether it means total or land area, treat the figure as incomplete.
A useful test for a ranking is whether it survives a change of method. Alaska passes easily: it leads on total, land, and water area alike, since its 94,743 square miles of water is also the largest water area of any state. A ranking that flips when you switch from total to land area, like Michigan’s position, tells you something real about that state’s geography, not something wrong with the data. Report state size as total, land, and water together, and say which measure a claim uses whenever only one is quoted.
Comparisons That Make Alaska’s Scale Possible to Picture
Raw numbers in the hundreds of thousands of square miles are hard to picture. Comparisons help, provided they are worked out from the same figures rather than repeated from memory.
The strongest single comparison is with the next three states combined. Texas, California, and Montana together cover 579,331 square miles in total area. Alaska, at 665,384 square miles, is larger than all three put together, by 86,053 square miles. That is striking, because Texas, California, and Montana are themselves the second, third, and fourth largest states. On land area alone, the comparison is much closer, but it still goes Alaska’s way: the three states together have 562,557 square miles of land, while Alaska has 570,641 square miles, a margin of 8,084 square miles. Stating both versions matters, because the total area version is often quoted without the land area check, and the margin on land is far narrower than the margin on total area.
A second comparison uses the smallest state. Alaska could contain Rhode Island more than 430 times over by total area. State sizes in the United States thus span more than two orders of magnitude, from a state you can drive across in under an hour to a state that takes days to cross.
A third comparison uses the contiguous United States as the yardstick. The State of Alaska’s own geography page describes Alaska as about one fifth the size of the lower 48 states, and the Census figures support that description in round terms. Texas is the largest state in that smaller set, which is why “largest state in the contiguous United States” and “largest state in the United States” have different answers. If a question says “largest state” without qualification, the answer is Alaska. If it says “largest contiguous state,” the answer is Texas.
Finally, it helps to picture Alaska’s shape. The State of Alaska gives its extent as about 2,400 miles from east to west and about 1,420 miles from north to south, rounded dimensions that vary slightly between sources depending on which points they measure between. Its border with Canada runs about 1,538 miles, longer than the full length of many states.
What Fills All That Space: Alaska’s Regions
Alaska is not one landscape repeated at large scale. It is several distinct regions joined inside one state boundary: the Arctic coastal plain, the North Slope, facing the Arctic Ocean; the Brooks Range, a mountain barrier running east to west; the Interior, forests, rivers, and rolling uplands around Fairbanks; the Alaska Range, holding Denali; the coastal mountains, fjords, and rainforest of the Southeast panhandle beside Canada; and, to the southwest, the Alaska Peninsula and the Aleutian island chain reaching into the North Pacific and the Bering Sea.
Denali concentrates Alaska’s scale into a single landmark. Denali, federally designated as Mount McKinley, rises to 20,310 feet (6,190 meters), making it the highest mountain in North America, according to the National Park Service. Its base sits at about 2,000 feet above sea level, so it rises about three and a half vertical miles from base to summit, a greater base to summit rise than Mount Everest, whose base already sits on a high plateau. Permanent snow and ice cover more than 75 percent of the mountain, and its glaciers can reach 45 miles in length. The older figure of 20,320 feet, still found in some older books, was superseded by a modern survey announced in 2015; the current official figure is 20,310 feet.
Alaska’s water is as important as its land. The state is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Bering Sea and the Chukchi Sea to the west, and the Gulf of Alaska and the North Pacific Ocean to the south. Its largest natural freshwater lake, Iliamna, covers 1,150 square miles, the state counts more than 3 million lakes in total, most of them small, its longest river, the Yukon, runs 1,875 miles inside Alaska out of a total length of 2,298 miles, and its largest island, Kodiak, covers 3,588 square miles. These rounded, state-published figures give texture; the Census table remains the authority for comparisons. Alaska’s size is not empty space. It is mountains, ice fields, forests, tundra, lakes, rivers, islands, and coastline, at a scale no other state matches.
The human geography mirrors the physical geography. Alaska’s capital is Juneau, in the Southeast, a city reachable by air or by sea rather than by road from the rest of the state. Anchorage, in the south-central region, is the state’s largest city. The State of Alaska’s geography page gives an area-per-person figure of about 0.91 square miles per person: a very large state with a comparatively small population spread across it. Distances between communities are long, many places are reachable only by air or water, and travel and supplies must be planned around distance. Size, in Alaska, is a daily fact of travel, weather, and logistics, not an abstract ranking.
A Quirk Worth Knowing: The Easternmost and Westernmost State
Alaska holds one more distinction that surprises almost everyone who hears it: depending on how you define east and west, Alaska is both the easternmost and the westernmost state in the United States.
The explanation lies in the Aleutian chain. The 180th meridian, the line halfway around the world from the Prime Meridian at Greenwich, passes through the Aleutian Islands. Land west of that line carries east longitude, while land just east of it carries west longitude. The State of Alaska explains that Pochnoi Point on Semisopochnoi Island, at 179 degrees 46 minutes east, is the most easterly point in longitude terms, while Amatignak Island, at 179 degrees 06 minutes west, is the most westerly point, only about 70 miles apart on opposite sides of the meridian. On a plain map, with west on the left and east on the right, the farthest western land you can travel to is Cape Wrangell on Attu Island, and the farthest eastern point is near Camp Point in the Southeast. Both descriptions are correct under their own definitions, and Alaska wins the area contest under every definition.
Why the Answer Is Stable
It is worth asking whether Alaska’s lead could ever be overturned. The short answer is no, not by any plausible revision of the figures, and not by any change in method that a reasonable person would adopt.
First, the margin is huge. Alaska leads Texas by 396,788 square miles in total area, and by 309,409 square miles in land area. No revision of boundary mapping, no change in how water is classified, and no rounding choice is going to move nearly 400,000 square miles from one column to another. Small revisions do happen, and the difference between the Census table used here and a later Census vintage may shift Alaska’s figure by hundreds or even a few thousand square miles. That is noise against a lead of hundreds of thousands.
Second, state boundaries are legally fixed, not measured anew each year. Alaska’s boundary with Canada and its borders with the surrounding seas are matters of treaty, law, and longstanding practice. Erosion, sea level change, and improved mapping can adjust the measured area at the margins, but they cannot transfer a Texas-sized area between states. Third, only a change in the set of states itself, such as admitting a new state larger than Alaska, could change the ranking, and neither that nor the division of Alaska is a live prospect. The ranking has been stable since Alaska became the 49th state on January 3, 1959. Older sources agree with newer ones on the headline, even when they disagree on the decimals, so trust the headline without hesitation while treating exact decimals as vintage dependent.
A Short History of How Alaska Became So Large
Alaska’s size is the result of a single purchase. Russian traders and explorers had been active along the Alaskan coast from the 1700s, but permanent Russian settlers never numbered more than a few hundred, according to the U.S. Department of State’s Office of the Historian, and Russia lacked the resources to support major settlements or a military presence along the Pacific coast. After defeat in the Crimean War further reduced Russian interest, Russia offered to sell Alaska to the United States. Secretary of State William Seward took up a renewed Russian offer after the American Civil War, and on March 30, 1867, agreed to purchase Alaska for 7.2 million dollars. The Senate approved the treaty on April 9, President Andrew Johnson signed it on May 28, and Alaska was formally transferred on October 18, 1867. Critics mocked the purchase as “Seward’s Folly,” but the Yukon gold discovery in 1896 made Alaska the gateway to the Klondike gold fields, and its strategic importance was recognized in full during the Second World War. Alaska became the 49th state on January 3, 1959, with Hawaii following later the same year as the 50th state.
That history explains why one state boundary encloses so much varied territory: the purchase transferred the whole Russian claim in North America, from the Arctic coast to the Aleutian chain, in a single treaty. It is also a reminder that the land was already inhabited before any of these transactions. The peoples who lived across Alaska, including Inupiat, Yupik, Aleut (Unangan), Athabascan, Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian peoples, were not parties to that bargain in any meaningful sense, and their histories in Alaska long predate both the Russian and American periods. A full history of Alaska would start with those peoples, not with the 1867 treaty. The purchase story is included here because it explains the boundary, not because it explains Alaska.
Common Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
Most wrong answers come from answering a different question from the one asked. First, Texas: correct for “largest state in the contiguous United States,” wrong overall. If the question does not say “contiguous” or “lower 48,” Texas is wrong. Second, California: the most populous state, and third largest by area, but population and area are different rankings. Third, quoting land area as total area, or the reverse: Alaska’s land area of 570,641 square miles and its total area of 665,384 square miles differ by nearly 95,000 square miles, more than the entire total area of many states. Fourth, quoting a coastline length without a method: Alaska’s coastline can honestly be given as 6,640 miles, 33,904 miles, or 47,300 miles, depending on method. Fifth, treating Washington, DC, or a territory as a state: the District is the national capital district, not a state, and Puerto Rico, Guam, and the other territories are not states either. Sixth, assuming that because a figure is old, it is wrong: the Census table used here dates its boundaries to 2010, and later vintages revise the decimals without changing the ranking or any comparison here by enough to matter. For a legal or engineering purpose, use the latest Census release. For which state is largest, and by roughly how much, the 2010 table answers it fully.
What to Remember
If you remember only five things, remember these. Alaska is the largest state by total area, at 665,384 square miles, and by land area, at 570,641 square miles. Texas is second, at 268,596 square miles in total, so Alaska is more than twice the size of Texas, and larger than Texas, California, and Montana combined. Texas is the largest state in the contiguous United States, a different question with a different answer. Alaska leads on total, land, and water area alike, while states like Michigan move sharply depending on which measure you use. And coastline length depends on how closely you trace the shore, so quote Alaska’s coastline with its method: 6,640 miles point to point, 33,904 miles of detailed shoreline, or an estimated 47,300 miles of tidal shoreline.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the largest state in the U.S.?
Alaska. It is the largest state by total area, at 665,384 square miles, and by land area, at 570,641 square miles, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Texas is second on both measures.
Is Texas the largest state?
No, not overall. Texas is the second largest state by area, and the largest in the contiguous United States, the 48 joined states excluding Alaska and Hawaii. If a question says “contiguous” or “lower 48,” Texas is the answer. Otherwise, Alaska is.
How big is Alaska compared to Texas?
Alaska’s total area is about 2.5 times the total area of Texas, and its land area is about 2.2 times the land area of Texas. Alaska is also larger than Texas, California, and Montana combined, on both total area and land area.
What is the smallest state in the U.S.?
Rhode Island, at 1,545 square miles in total area, of which 1,034 square miles is land. Alaska’s total area is more than 430 times the total area of Rhode Island. The District of Columbia is smaller, at 68 square miles, but it is not a state.
Is Alaska bigger than California?
Yes, by a wide margin. California’s total area is 163,695 square miles, less than a quarter of Alaska’s total area of 665,384 square miles. California is the third largest state by area, and the most populous state, but it is not close to Alaska on area.
Why do different sources give different sizes for Alaska?
Because they use different vintages of Census boundary data, different mapping detail, and sometimes different measures. Small differences of hundreds of square miles are normal. Large differences usually mean one source quoted land area and the other quoted total area. Always check which measure and which vintage a figure uses.
How long is Alaska’s coastline?
It depends on the method: 6,640 miles point to point, 33,904 miles of detailed shoreline including islands, or an estimated 47,300 miles of tidal shoreline. Quote the method with the number, or the number on its own is misleading.
Is Alaska the largest state by population too?
No. Size by area and size by population are different rankings, and Alaska is sparsely settled for its area. The State of Alaska’s geography page gives an area-per-person figure of about 0.91 square miles per person, which captures the contrast: a very large state with comparatively few people spread across it.
When did Alaska become a state?
Alaska became the 49th state on January 3, 1959. It had been purchased from Russia in 1867 for 7.2 million dollars and formally transferred to the United States on October 18, 1867.
Could another state ever overtake Alaska in size?
Not by any plausible remeasurement. Alaska leads Texas by nearly 400,000 square miles in total area, far more than any mapping revision could move. Only admitting a new state larger than Alaska could change the ranking, and no such change is in prospect.
Sources & references
- U.S. Census Bureau, "State Area Measurements and Internal Point Coordinates" (boundaries as of January 1, 2010; MAF/TIGER database through August 2010). Opened and read 25 October 2026. Source for all total, land, and water area figures in the tables and comparisons in this article, for the United States total area figure, for the District of Columbia figure, and for the conversion note that one square mile equals 2.58998811 square kilometers and that water figures include only perennial water.
- State of Alaska, "Geography of Alaska" (Alaska Kids' Corner, sourced to The Alaska Almanac, 27th Edition). Opened and read 25 October 2026. Source for Alaska's extent of about 2,400 miles east to west and 1,420 miles north to south, the Alaska-Canada border length of about 1,538 miles, the three coastline figures (6,640 miles point to point; 33,904 miles detailed shoreline; 47,300 miles tidal shoreline), the easternmost and westernmost point explanation, Denali's older 20,320 foot figure as superseded, Iliamna Lake at 1,150 square miles, the Yukon River at 1,875 miles in Alaska, Kodiak Island at 3,588 square miles, the more than 3 million lakes figure, the adjacent salt waters, the area-per-person figure of about 0.91 square miles per person, and the capital Juneau.
- U.S. National Park Service, "The Alaska Range and Mount McKinley: Geology and Orogeny." Opened and read 25 October 2026. Source for Denali (Mount McKinley) at 20,310 feet as the highest mountain in North America, its base at about 2,000 feet, its base to summit rise of about three and a half vertical miles exceeding that of Mount Everest, permanent snow and ice over more than 75 percent of the mountain, and glaciers up to 45 miles long.
- U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian, "Purchase of Alaska, 1867" (Milestones in the History of U.S. Foreign Relations). Opened and read 25 October 2026. Source for the 1867 purchase for 7.2 million dollars agreed March 30, 1867, Senate approval April 9, presidential signature May 28, formal transfer October 18, 1867, the "Seward's Folly" nickname, the Yukon gold discovery in 1896, and Alaska becoming a state on January 3, 1959.
