Panhandle

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Locations of panhandles within US states

A panhandle or salient is an informal geographic term for an elongated tail-like protrusion of a geo-political entity, such as an administrative division or a sovereign state that extends into another such entity as a peninsula extends into the sea. The former "folksy" term derives from the analogous part of a cooking pan and its use is generally confined to the United States. A term used elsewhere is salient, derived from military salients. A panhandle is similar to a peninsula in shape, but unlike a peninsula it is not surrounded by water on three sides (but may have water on one or two sides, like Florida's panhandle) and connected to a geographical mainland, but is a land region surrounded on three sides by land regions not of the same jurisdiction. Instead, a panhandle is delimited by a land border on at least two sides and extends out from the larger geographical body of the administrative unit. The panhandle shape is the result of arbitrarily drawn international or subnational boundaries, although the location of some administrative borders takes into account other considerations such as economic ties or topography. The state of Missouri has a protrusion with a less elongated shape, which is informally called the bootheel. Tallahassee, Florida is the largest city of any panhandle in the United States of America

• The six Northwest Cook County, Illinois townships, part of Chicagoland.^{[citation needed]}
• The Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis Railway was often called the Panhandle, as it crossed the Northern Panhandle of West Virginia.
• San Francisco, (California) Panhandle

[edit] Panhandles outside the United States

Outside of the United States, the term is not in common usage, with the arguable exception of the nearby New Brunswick Panhandle. Nonetheless, some people would describe the following characteristic territorial protrusions elsewhere as a corridor or an arm extending into an administratively different territory. Such shapes of territory can be a result of linguistic (or ethnic) lines, in addition to geographic features and other reasons.

[edit] See also

Look up panhandle in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Bootheel
• Border irregularities of the United States
• Chicken's Neck
• Fergana Valley (triple junction of Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan)
• Border
• Gerrymandering
• Political geography
• Corridor
• Strip of land
• Enclave and exclave
• The Thumb
• Salients, re-entrants and pockets

[edit] References

This article does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (November 2006)

The examples and perspective in this USA may not represent a worldwide view of the subject. Please improve this article and discuss the issue on the talk page. (December 2009)