The city of Anchorage started as a tent city around the main construction base for the Alaska Railroad. It was incorporated in 1920 and ceased to exist in 1975 when it merged with the Borough (like Louisiana, Alaska has no counties) to become the Municipality of Anchorage. The Municipality is slightly larger than the state of Delaware, but because of the Chugach Mountains, only a tiny fraction of this landmass is habitable by anything other than moose and bears.
Anchorage (the city) sits at the western edge of the Chugach Mountains on a large tongue of gravel left behind eons ago by a retreating glacier. It is shaped roughly like an arrow head with the base attached to the mountains and surrounded on the other two sides by the waters of Cook Inlet. For obvious reasons, the most popular way to leave town nowadays is by air. To leave by road, Alaska Highway 1 is quite literally the only way to go. Ironically, if you were hoping to end up someplace that is not Alaska, you have to start your journey by heading north. Drive south instead and in about five hours you will run out of road and find yourself in the hamlet of Homer, which proudly proclaims itself to be a drinking village with a fishing problem.
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