Alaska - State Symbols

State Symbols

  • State Motto: North to the Future
  • Nicknames: "The Last Frontier" or "Land of the Midnight Sun" or "Seward's Icebox"
  • State bird: Willow Ptarmigan, adopted by the Territorial Legislature in 1955. It is a small (15–17 inches) Arctic grouse that lives among willows and on open tundra and muskeg. Plumage is brown in summer, changing to white in winter. The Willow Ptarmigan is common in much of Alaska.
  • State fish: King Salmon, adopted 1962.
  • State flower: wild/native Forget-me-not, adopted by the Territorial Legislature in 1917. It is a perennial that is found throughout Alaska, from Hyder to the Arctic Coast, and west to the Aleutians.
  • State fossil: Woolly Mammoth, adopted 1986.
  • State gem: Jade, adopted 1968.
  • State insect: Four-spot skimmer dragonfly, adopted 1995.
  • State land mammal: Moose, adopted 1998.
  • State marine mammal: Bowhead Whale, adopted 1983.
  • State mineral: Gold, adopted 1968.
  • State song: "Alaska's Flag"
  • State sport: Dog Mushing, adopted 1972.
  • State tree: Sitka Spruce, adopted 1962.
  • State dog: Alaskan Malamute, adopted 2010.
  • State soil: Tanana, adopted unknown.

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Famous quotes containing the words state and/or symbols:

    “There is such a thing as caste, even in the West; but it is comparatively faint; it is conservatism here. It says, forsake not your calling, outrage no institution, use no violence, rend no bonds; the State is thy parent. Its virtue or manhood is wholly filial.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    “As usual I finish the day before the sea, sumptuous this evening beneath the moon, which writes Arab symbols with phosphorescent streaks on the slow swells. There is no end to the sky and the waters. How well they accompany sadness!”
    —Albert Camus (1913–1960)