"You were against statehood?"
"Oh, sure. Oh, sure. Before then, three-quarters of the people here weren’t here. Eight or nine hundred people ran the Territory. Ten thousand now run the state. Where it used to take one person to investigate you, it now takes two to four. The state spends too much. If a tree blows down, two guys from the state come with a chain saw. The state has sold the state out. To the unions. To the oil companies. The oil companies have more power than the legislature. The capital move [away from Juneau] is a lot of talk. That’s all it is, a lot of talk. What we need is not a new capital but better legislators than we have. I’d say leave the capital where it’s at. The state can’t afford it. There is no economy. They’re dreaming about all this oil money.
That is from John McPhee’s excellent Coming into the Country, a study of Alaska recommended to me by several MR readers. Here is a short 2002 piece on switching the capital of Alaska and the oddity of putting it in Juneau. Here is a useful map. Here is a picture of Juneau and from the air. Googling "Juneau traffic report" does not in fact bring up any traffic reports.
Touring Juneau, the bus driver was full of all sorts of interesting facts.
“You can’t steal a car in Juneau. In order for it to be considered something other than joy-riding, you have to drive it for more miles that Juneau has.”
“There are only three ways of getting to this city: by air, by boat, or by birth.”
Sacramento, California?
Why is it that state capitals are often not the largest city? Frankfort, Kentucky? Tallahassee, Florida? Sacramento, California?
I think many state capital cities were picked with an eye towards a central location in the state. Sacramento, Salem Oregon and Olympia Washington seem to fit this mold. They were also picked before it was known which cities were going to be the big population centers.
The decision to have state capitals not be the largest city is often done as a balance of power between the state and municipal goverments. For example, if San Francisco or Los Angeles were the capital of California, state politics would be drastically changed and biased towards the capital city in disfavor of the other major city. Or in the case of New York versus Albany, NYC has plenty of power as-is. If NYC were capital versus Albany, the rest of the state would cease to politically exist in state politics, even more than is already so.
I’m being overly simplistic, but I thought I’d chime in here.
In the last few years, Alaska has been subject to what is called “capital creep.” Gradually more state government departments are locating their staffs, and even their headquarters, in Anchorage. The legislature still meets in Juneau, but more and more of the executive functions are moving north. The court system administration, along with the state supreme court, has always been in Anchorage. Anchorage is way more convenient in many ways than Juneau, as the map referenced by Prof. Cowen suggests.
The capital will never be moved, and here’s why: Alaskans rely far more on air travel than people in other states do, and the hubs of in-state air travel are Anchorage and Fairbanks. This means that these cities are clearly the best choices to move the capital. Since the a major qualification of moving the capital is to prevent these cities from having too much power, you probably shouldn’t invest in Willow real estate anytime soon.
I have not done a precise count recently, but when
I did some years ago, I found only 14, maybe 15,
states where the largest city is the capital. This
is not a matter of not knowing what the biggest
city would be in general, although there are
certainly states where that has changed. But I know
of few where the state capital was the biggest city
once upon a time, but is not now (maybe Virginia).
Besides the balancing off two big cities or trying
to have a capital in the middle of the state,
another factor is resentment by those outside of
the biggest city of its power, especially when that
city is really big. So, New York, LA, Chicago,
Houston, Philadelphia, Detroit, Baltimore, St. Louis,
Cleveland, Seattle, and many others are not state
capitals. About the only really large cities that
are include Boston, Atlanta, and Phoenix. Others
that are the largest and the state capital include
Honolulu, Salt Lake City, Denver, Oklahoma City,
Little Rock, Des Moines, Jackson, Indianapolis,
Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Idaho. Maybe there
are one or two more, and maybe one or two of those
do not belong on the list.
St. Mary’s was originally the capital of Maryland. It was the first settlement in the state, founded in 1634 by the Calverts (aka Lords Baltmore) who obtained Maryland as a land grant from the King. St. Mary’s was the first capital of the colony.
“Anne Arundel’s Towne” (after the wife of Lord Baltimore) became a very rich port town due to the slave trade. In 1694, soon after the overthrow of the Catholic government of the lord proprietor, Sir Francis Nicholson moved the capital of the royal colony there and named the town Annapolis after Princess Anne, soon to be the Queen of Great Britain.
The port of Baltimore at Locust Point was established in 1706 for the tobacco trade, and the town of Baltimore was not founded until 1729.
And the more cheap mesos is very good for you.
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