Meanwhile, down in the nation’s capital, Alaska’s territorial delegates had been promoting various statehood measures for some years. In addition to the concern of low population, chief among the issues of any statehood debate was the question of how much land from the public domain would be granted to the new state. The federal government owned 99.8 percent of Alaska’s vast territory, a much higher percentage than in any other would-be state over the years. Even in some of the more expansive western states, the public domain had been reduced by massive railroad land grants prior to statehood.
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