What is a panhandle & which US States have them?

Panhandles. A panhandle is, by definition, a narrow strip of territory projecting from the main territory of one state into another

It's called this because it looks precisely like a panhandle, although boot heel is another term in some places, but less used

These are, however, common names, and the correct geographical term is, I believe, salient

While similar to a peninsula in shape, a salient is most often not surrounded by water on three sides

Instead, it has a land border on at least two sides and extends from the larger geographical body of the administrative unit

That's the official description. A few countries across the world have them within their borders

Namibia, for instance, has one whose origin is in its German and British colonial past

Argentina has a tiny one, Miziones. India has one too with the seven sister states, the largest panhandle in the world

And then we have the U.S. Some people call Alaska the panhandle of the U.S

I would say this is inaccurate because they're not territorially connected. It would have to be some type of magnetized panhandle that didn't actually connect to the pan

but levitated it with magnetism. But anyway, you could also consider Florida a panhandle in its entirety, but it's a peninsula

and like we saw just now, those are different things. Despite not having an official panhandle as a country the internal states of the U do In some cases have them There are 10 of them in total in nine different states one of them has two Texas with its northern

panhandle, West Virginia with this narrow strip of land that is sandwiched in between Ohio and

Pennsylvania and its eastern panhandle as well towards Maryland and Washington, D.C

Alaska with this narrow coastline within Canada, Florida, perhaps one of the most famous

panhandles within the U.S., it's the part of northern Florida. that isn't in the peninsula. Connecticut, which also has a panhandle, pretty much only by definition. It's so small that it doesn't really look like one. Idaho in the northern part of the state. Nebraska in this western area. Maryland in the west, too. And perhaps the most iconic of all, Oklahoma, with this tiny horizontal strip of land above Texas, actually above Texas's own panhandle. It's also interesting to point out that out of these 10 panhandles, four of them exist together in groups of two. Oklahoma's and Texas

as these panhandles are connected, the same thing happens with West Virginia's eastern panhandle and Maryland's western one

So now that we've learned which US states have panhandles and what those look like, let's learn why they exist

Surely most people will agree that they don't really look good on a map, and it would be much easier to just add it to a neighboring state for it to look cleaner

Furthermore, so many US states have straight lines as borders