States · Alaska
Alaska: every borough, ranked.
The State Screen scores all 30 boroughs and census areas in Alaska from 0 to 100 against each other on the four things a homestead can't do without: water, privacy, hazard exposure and access. Nothing is screened out.
Top five boroughs and census areas
- Kusilvak Census Area
- Kenai Peninsula Borough
- Kodiak Island Borough
- Hoonah-Angoon Census Area
- Haines Borough
In order, without their scores. Every borough's score, its four sub-scores and the raw numbers behind them are in the free map.
Free for an email address: a Google Earth file with every borough clickable.
What the map says about Alaska
Rainfall runs from 10 to 122 inches a year across Alaska, with the median borough at 37.
Across the 21 boroughs and census areas with enough wells on record, the typical well is 78 ft deep. In 90% of those boroughs and census areas the median well is 150 ft or shallower; in 0% it is 400 ft or more.
The hazard that scores worst most often is landslide, in 19 of 30 boroughs and census areas.
97% of Alaska's boroughs and census areas sit outside every metro commuting ring, and the median one is 94 miles from a town of 5,000.
These are boroughs and census areas, not parcels. A good score says the region has the water, the quiet and the hazard profile; it says nothing about a particular piece of land's flood zone, access or water source.
Then make it yours
The State Screen is one opinion of what matters. The complete map is 35 layers you switch on and off to suit your own search — wildfire, water rights, radon, well depth, state gun and homeschool law, distance from the cities, military sites and more — across the US, Canada and Mexico.