Well, we gained a lot of oil people who brought up:

Baptists, Texans, and Walmart culture.

Sen. Ted goes back to postwar days but as we've seen in this thread he had a lot to do with shaping the Alaska of today.

I'm sure there were folks who felt that the discovery of gold in the Yukon and later Alaska led to its own inescapable devolution of certain subarctic values.
Oil led us to the modern version of Alaska we find ourselves in today. On the national level it keeps our (US) horrible balance of trade from being much more horrible. On the local level it has brought a kind of reign of the internal combustion engine. I was invited fishing this morning which entailed me getting out of the house at about 4 AM to drive my Toyota pickup an hour North of town where I met up with others and we drive up a muddy rutty windy little road that takes us to the banks of the Knik River. On the way to that turnoff I was passed by a shiny black Dodge Ram pickup flying down the highway towing a trailer on which was a four-wheeler with ITS OWN TRAILER.

Reminded me of when I was brandy new here working in Anchorage, and one of the other employees Rode his own truck to a small airport in Wasilla, got in his own plane, flew it to Anchorage, got in a second truck in Anchorage, and came to the office. I meditated on the fact that this fella, an electrician, had three large engines totally at his own beck and call, to accomplish the daily commute.

I'm not sure I have a point Suffice it to say that after getting up by three and doing the fishing stint and then a full day of work I'm in an altered state of consciousness.