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The Florida Panhandle is the region of the state of Florida which includes the westernmost 16 counties in the state. It is a narrow strip lying between Alabama on the north and the west, Georgia also on the north, and the Gulf of Mexico to the south. Its
eastern boundary is arbitrarily-defined in this article along some chosen county lines, and it includes Tallahassee. The Apalachicola River is the largest river of the Panhandle. It is formed by the junction of several rivers, including the Chattahoochee
and the Flint, where Alabama, Georgia, and Florida meet. From there, it flows due south to the town of Apalachicola. The largest city of the Panhandle is Tallahassee, the state's capital. Major military bases include the Naval Air Station at
Pensacola (the home of Naval Aviation in the United States), Eglin Air Force Base, near Ft. Walton Beach, and Tyndall Air Force Base, near Panama City. The most important highway of the Panhandle is the east-west U.S. Interstate 10, running all the way
across it, part of the Christopher Columbus Transcontinental Highway, linking Jacksonville on the East Coast with Santa Monica, California on the West Coast. Other older east-west routes include U.S. Hwy-90 and U.S. Hwy-98. Important north-south highways
include U.S. Hwy-29, U.S. Hwy-331, and U.S. Hwy-231, all linking to Alabama and Interstate 65. Culturally and in terms of history and climate, like the First Coast region (of northeastern Florida), this region is more closely tied to the Deep South
than to the Peninsula of Florida. In the 1830s, before Florida became a state, the people of the Panhandle voted to join the State of Alabama. However, before this action could be implemented, a financial scandal broke out in the Alabama Legislature, and
the annexation was not carried out. Shortly after the Civil War, residents of Florida's peninsula considered ceding the state's entire western arm to Alabama for a million dollars. Alabama's leaders decided that the land was "a sand bank and gopher
region" as a result the Panhandle remained a part of Florida. The region is a major populated area of Florida.
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