Florida Panhandle  The Florida Panhandle (also West Florida and Northwest Florida) is the northwestern part of the U.S. state of Florida, is a strip of land roughly long and wide, lying between Alabama on the north and the west, Georgia on the north, and the Gulf of Mexico to the south. Its eastern boundary is arbitrarily defined. As is the case with the other eight U.S. states that have panhandles, the geographic meaning of the term is inexact and elastic. References to the Florida Panhandle always include the ten counties west of the Apalachicola River, a natural geographic boundary, which was the historic dividing line between the British colonies of West Florida and East Florida. These western counties also lie in the Central Time Zone (with the exception of Gulf County, which is divided between the Eastern and Central Time zones), while the rest of the state is in the Eastern Time Zone. References to the Panhandle "may" also include some or all of eight counties immediately east of the Apalachicola known as the Big Bend region, along the curve of Apalachee Bay. Like North Central Florida, the Panhandle is more similar in culture and climate to the Deep South than to South Florida in the lower peninsula, being known for its conservative politics and "piney woods." The largest city in the Panhandle is Tallahassee, the state capital, population 188,107 (2014). However, the largest population grouping is the Pensacola Metropolitan Area with a population of 494,883 (2018). The total population of the Panhandle, as of the 2010 Census, was 1,407,925, just under 7.5% of Florida's total population as recorded in the same census. "Emerald Coast", a term coined in 1983, refers in general to the beaches and coastal resorts from Pensacola to Port St. Joe, but is sometimes used to refer, by extension, to the Panhandle as a whole, especially west of the Apalachicola. Earlier designations include "Playground of the Gulfcoast" and the "Miracle Strip", especially for the area between Fort Walton Beach and Panama City. Coastal regions of the following counties (if not the entirety of the counties themselves) are usually included when referring to the Emerald Coast:   Coastal portions of Escambia County (namely Pensacola Beach) that lie on the western edge, and coastal portions of Bay County that lie on the eastern edge, are also regularly included when referring to the Emerald Coast, but with somewhat less regularity than the three aforementioned counties listed above.