Alaska became the 49th U.S. state on January 3, 1959.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Alaska Statehood Act in 1958, and Alaska entered the Union the following January. Its admission made it the first state added since Arizona in 1912 and gave the United States a vast territory in the far northwest of North America.
Alaska had been purchased from the Russian Empire in 1867 for $7.2 million. Critics initially mocked the transaction as “Seward’s Folly,” referring to Secretary of State William H. Seward, but the region’s resources and strategic position later proved significant.
Alaska’s statehood is often confused with Hawaii’s because the two admissions occurred in the same year. Hawaii became the 50th state on August 21, 1959. Alaska remains the largest U.S. state by area and is separated from the contiguous states by Canada.