Largest City in Area in the United States

Largest City in Area in the United States Although New York City is the most populous city in the United States, Yakutat, Alaska, is the largest city in the area. Yakutat includes a whopping 9,459.28 square miles (24,499 sq km) of area, composed of 1,808.82 square miles of water area and 7,650.46 square miles of land area (4,684.8 sq km and 19,814.6 sq km, respectively). The city is larger than the state of New Hampshire (the countrys fourth smallest state). Yakutat  had been founded in 1948, but in 1992 the city government was dissolved and it combined with the Yakutat Borough  to become the countrys largest city.  Its now officially known as the  City and Borough of Yakutat.   Location The city lies on the Gulf  of Alaska near the Hubbard Glacier and  is surrounded by or is nearby the  Tongass National Forests, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, and Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve. Yakutats  skyline is dominated by  Mount St. Elias, the United States second tallest peak. What Folks Do There Yakutat has a population of 601 as of 2016, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Fishing (both commercial and sport)  is its largest industry. Many types of salmon inhabit the rivers and streams:  steelhead, king (Chinook), sockeye, pink (humpback), and coho (silver). Yakutat hosts a three-day annual tern festival in late May or early June, as the area has one of the largest breeding grounds for  Aleutian terns. The bird is uncommon and hasnt been studied extensively; its winter range wasnt even discovered until the 1980s.  The festival features  birding activities, Native cultural presentations, natural history field trips, art exhibits, and other events. The first Saturday in August is the annual  Fairweather Day  celebration, which is full of live music at Cannon Beach Pavilion. People also come to the city for hiking, hunting (bears, mountain goats, ducks, and geese), and wildlife and nature viewing (moose, eagles, and bears), as the area is along migration patterns for waterfowl, raptors, and shorebirds.   Displacing Other Cities With its incorporation with the borough, Yakutat displaced Sitka, Alaska, as the largest city, which had displaced Juneau, Alaska. Sitka is 2,874 square miles (7,443.6 sq km) and Juneau is 2,717 square miles (7037 sq km). Sitka was the earliest large city, having been formed through the incorporation of the borough and city in 1970. Yakutat is a perfect example of an overbounded city, which refers to a city that has boundaries that extend far beyond its developed area (certainly the glaciers and ice fields in the city wont be developed soon). The Lower 48 Jacksonville, in northeast Florida, is the largest city in area in the contiguous 48 states at 840 square miles (2,175.6 sq km). Jacksonville includes all of Duval County, Florida, with the exception of the beach communities (Atlantic Beach, Neptune Beach, and Jacksonville Beach) and Baldwin. It had a population of 880,619 as of 2016 U.S. Census Bureau estimates. Visitors can enjoy golf, beaches, waterways, the NFLs  Jacksonville Jaguars, and acres and acres of parks (80,000 acres), as it has the largest network of urban parks in the country- more than 300.