Panhandle

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Locations of panhandles within US states

A panhandle is an informal geographic term for an elongated tail-like protrusion of a geo-political entity, such as a subnational entity or a sovereign state. The term "panhandle" 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. While similar to a peninsula in shape, a panhandle is not surrounded by water on three sides and connected to a geographical mainland. Instead, it 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. In the United States, a protrusion with a less elongated shape is informally called a bootheel.

[edit] Panhandles of the United States

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

[edit] References