Hawaii became the 50th and most recent state admitted to the United States on August 21, 1959.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Hawaii Admission Act in March 1959, and Hawaii voters approved statehood in a June referendum. Statehood followed Alaska’s admission as the 49th state on January 3, 1959.
Hawaii is an archipelago in the central Pacific Ocean. Its admission expanded the United States beyond the continental mainland and made Hawaii the only U.S. state composed entirely of islands.
The order is sometimes reversed because Alaska is geographically farther west and entered the Union earlier in the same year. Hawaii’s statehood is also different from the 1898 annexation of the Hawaiian Islands and from the 1900 establishment of the Territory of Hawaii.