THE MATANUSKA-SUSITNA BOROUGH LAND BRIEF
Land in the
Alaska Range setting.
Matanuska-Susitna Borough has 24,707.1 square miles of land in Alaska. 4 mapped landscape regions meet across Matanuska-Susitna Borough: Alaska Range, Cook Inlet, Pacific Coastal Mountains, among others.
Very high, steep mountains carry extensive icefields, glaciers and rocky slopes. Vegetation is limited in the highest and most exposed portions of the Alaska Range.
Regional context: Alaska Range ↗ · Regional mapping across the county footprint
Where the landscape changes
Matanuska-Susitna Borough intersects 4 mapped regional units. The largest mapped shares are:
- Alaska Range63.2%
- Cook Inlet26.6%
- Pacific Coastal Mountains7%
- Copper Plateau3.2%
Cook Inlet in Matanuska-Susitna Borough
Glacially shaped level and rolling terrain surrounds Cook Inlet. Spruce and hardwood vegetation occupies a relatively mild coastal setting compared with much of interior Alaska.
Read the regional source ↗Pacific Coastal Mountains in Matanuska-Susitna Borough
Coastal Alaska's steep, wet mountains include large areas of glacial terrain. Rocky slopes and ice-covered highlands contrast with lower shrub-covered settings where vegetation can establish.
Read the regional source ↗Finding your parcel within Matanuska-Susitna Borough
The atlas lists 30 cities, towns, townships, and Census communities associated with Matanuska-Susitna Borough, including Willow, Petersville, Skwentna. The list includes overlapping geography types and does not divide the county into exclusive service areas.
Matanuska-Susitna Borough by land and water
The Census records 560.5 square miles of water within Matanuska-Susitna Borough, or 2.2% of its total area. That share is close to Matanuska-Susitna Borough’s 2.2%. This is geographic context; waterfront status and usable land must be checked at the parcel.
For scale, Matanuska-Susitna Borough has 89.5 times the land area of nearby Susitna North CDP (276 square miles). These areas describe boundaries, not comparable property prices.
The Census boundary meets Anchorage Municipality, Bethel Census Area, Chugach Census Area, Copper River Census Area, Denali Borough, Kenai Peninsula Borough, Southeast Fairbanks Census Area, Yukon-Koyukuk Census Area within Alaska. A tract near one of these lines should be matched to the county identifier on its own records.