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National Petroleum Reserve

(Encyclopedia)National Petroleum Reserve, area, c.23 million acres (9.32 million hectares), Alaska North Slope, situated W of Prudhoe Bay and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The reserve, which is the largest r...

wilderness

(Encyclopedia)wilderness, land retaining its primeval character with the imprint of humans minimal or unnoticeable. In the United States, the Wilderness Act of 1964 established the National Wilderness Preservation ...

Alaska, University of

(Encyclopedia)Alaska, University of, at Fairbanks, Anchorage, and Juneau; land-grant and state supported; coeducational; chartered 1917, opened 1922 as Alaska Agricultural College and School of Mines. In 1935 it be...

panhandle

(Encyclopedia)panhandle, in geography, a strip of land projecting from the main body of an area and shaped like the handle of a pan, such as the panhandles of West Virginia, Texas, and Alaska. ...

Chilkoot Pass

(Encyclopedia)Chilkoot Pass chĭlˈko͞ot [key], alt. c.3,500 ft (1,070 m), in the Coast Mts., on the British Columbia–Alaska line. The Chilkoot people long used it to pass between the Pacific coast and the Yukon...

public land

(Encyclopedia)public land, in U.S. history, land owned by the federal government but not reserved for any special purpose, e.g., for a park or a military reservation. Public land is also called land in the public d...

Diomede Islands

(Encyclopedia)Diomede Islands dīˈəmēd [key], pair of rocky islands in Bering Strait between Alaska and Siberia. The larger island, Big Diomede, is Russian, while the smaller is part of Alaska. At 2 mi (3 km) ap...

Bering Strait

(Encyclopedia)Bering Strait, c.55 mi (90 km) wide, between extreme NE Asia and extreme NW North America, connecting the Arctic Ocean and the Bering Sea. It is usually completely frozen over from October to June. Th...

Alaska Peninsula

(Encyclopedia)Alaska Peninsula, SW Alaska, extending 500 mi (800 km) SW from the mainland, separating Bristol Bay and the Bering Sea from Cook Inlet, the Shelikof Strait, and Pacific Ocean. The Aleutian Range, runn...

Prince of Wales Island, United States

(Encyclopedia)Prince of Wales Island, 2,231 sq mi (5,778 sq km), off SE Alaska; largest island of the Alexander Archipelago. The island is heavily forested, but has little arable land, no source of freshwater, and ...
 

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