Which US state is the largest by area?

Alaska is so much larger than any other state that the usual inset box on American maps badly misleads people about it. Superimposed on the contiguous states it would stretch roughly from coast to coast, and it contains the highest mountain in North America along with an enormous span of tundra, boreal forest, glaciers and volcanic islands. The United States bought the territory from Russia in 1867 for a sum that critics mocked at the time, and it remained a sparsely settled district for decades before gold, then fish, then oil transformed its economy, with statehood arriving only in 1959. Its shape adds to the scale: the Aleutian chain reaches so far west that it crosses the hundred-and-eightieth meridian, and the southeastern panhandle runs down the coast alongside British Columbia. Despite covering all that ground, Alaska has very few roads, and many communities can be reached only by boat or small aircraft.

Alaska's Aleutian Islands extend into the Eastern Hemisphere, so the state technically contains both the westernmost and easternmost points of the country.