>>When Texas first joined the US in 1849, it was granted two provisions that no other state ever had. The first being the ability to leave and become its own country again and the second was the possibility of breaking up into 5 states (given the land mass that is Texas). Remember, if you flip Texas up over the Texas/Oklahoma border Brownsville would be 8 miles from the Canadian border and if you flipped it westward from El Paso, Houston would sit on LA.
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>But of course, just for perspective, if you broke Alaska in half, each half would still be larger than Texas.
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The amazing thing about Alaska is that if you included all the islands, it would stretch from coast to coast of the continental U.S.