When did the 50th state join?

The 50th and most recent state to join the Union was Hawaii, admitted on August 21, 1959, the date President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the proclamation completing the admission process. Hawaii's path to statehood took more than 60 years from initial U.S. annexation. Hawaii had been an independent kingdom under monarchs descended from King Kamehameha I (who unified the islands by conquest between 1782 and 1810) until American sugar planters and U.S. Marines orchestrated the overthrow of Queen Liliuokalani on January 17, 1893.

The provisional government founded the Republic of Hawaii in 1894 and applied for U.S. annexation. President Grover Cleveland refused, but Congress finally annexed Hawaii by joint resolution on July 7, 1898 during the Spanish-American War. Hawaii became a U.S. territory on April 30, 1900 under the Organic Act. Statehood was discussed for decades but blocked by various political concerns including the islands' large Asian American population (which some white politicians feared), labor militancy in the sugar and pineapple industries, and the bundling of Hawaii's statehood with Alaska's during congressional debates.

The Hawaii Statehood Act of March 18, 1959 was signed by President Eisenhower, and Hawaiian voters approved statehood by 94 percent in a referendum on June 27, 1959. Eisenhower issued the formal proclamation on August 21, 1959.

Hawaii is the only U.S. state located outside North America, the only state composed entirely of islands, and the only state that grows coffee. The state consists of eight major islands plus many smaller ones in a chain about 1,500 miles long in the central Pacific Ocean. The eight major islands are Hawaii (also called the Big Island, the largest), Maui, Oahu (the most populous, home to Honolulu), Kauai, Molokai, Lanai, Niihau (privately owned, with limited access), and Kahoolawe (uninhabited, formerly a U.S. Navy bombing range).

Honolulu on Oahu is the state capital and largest city, with about 350,000 residents. Total state population is about 1.45 million. Hawaii's culture combines indigenous Hawaiian traditions, Polynesian heritage, and the contributions of Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, Portuguese, Korean, and other immigrant communities who came to work the sugar plantations from the 1850s onward. Native Hawaiians constitute about 21 percent of the population, the highest proportion of indigenous people in any state.

The economy depends heavily on tourism (especially Pearl Harbor, Waikiki Beach, Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, and Haleakala), military spending (Pearl Harbor naval base, Schofield Barracks, Hickam Air Force Base, and others), and agriculture (sugar, pineapple, coffee, macadamia nuts, papaya). The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 brought the United States into World War II.