Ruhr Area in the context of "Oberhausen"

The Saar Protectorate (German: Saarprotektorat [ˈzaːɐ̯pʁotɛktoˌʁaːt]; French: Protectorat de la Sarre), officially Saarland (French: Sarre), was a French protectorate and a disputed territory separated from Germany. On joining West Germany in 1957, it became the smallest "federal state" (Bundesland), the Saarland, not counting the "city states" (Stadtstaaten) of Berlin, Hamburg, and Bremen. It is named after the Saar River.

The region around the Saar River and its tributary valleys is a geologically folded, mineral-rich, ethnically German, economically important, and heavily industrialized area. It has well-developed transportation infrastructure, and was one of the centres of the Industrial Revolution in Germany. Around 1900, the region formed the third-largest area of coal, iron, and steel industry in Germany (after the Ruhr Area and the Upper Silesian Coal Basin). From 1920 to 1935, as a result of World War I, the region was under the control of the League of Nations as the Territory of the Saar Basin. In 1935, Nazi Germany established its full sovereignty over the territory.

Bundesautobahn 1 (translates from German as Federal Motorway 1, short form Autobahn 1, abbreviated as BAB 1 or A 1) is an autobahn in Germany. It runs from Heiligenhafen in Schleswig-Holstein to Saarbrücken, a distance of 749 km (465 mi), but is incomplete between Cologne and Trier. B 207 continues north from Heiligenhafen to Puttgarden, at the end of the island of Fehmarn, with a ferry to Rødby, Denmark.

The part north of Hamburg is part of the Vogelfluglinie (Migratory Birds Line) and may be one day connected via a fixed link to Denmark (see below). The term Hansalinie (Hansa line) refers to the part from Lübeck (north of Hamburg, thus overlapping the Vogelfluglinie) south to the Ruhr Area (near Dortmund).

Castrop-Rauxel (German pronunciation: [ˌkastʁɔpˈʁaʊksl̩] ), often simply referred to as Castrop by locals, is a former coal mining city in the eastern part of the Ruhr Area within the state of North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany.

The Wesel–Datteln Canal (German: Wesel-Datteln-Kanal) is a 60-kilometre (37 mi) long canal in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It runs along the northern edge of the Ruhr Area, from the Rhine near Wesel (51°38′21″N 6°36′25″E / 51.63917°N 6.60694°E / 51.63917; 6.60694) to the Dortmund-Ems Canal near Datteln (51°39′45″N 7°21′58″E / 51.66250°N 7.36611°E / 51.66250; 7.36611). It forms an important transport connection between the Lower Rhine and northern and eastern Germany, together with the parallel Rhine-Herne Canal.

Construction of the Wesel–Datteln Canal was started in 1915, and the canal was opened in 1930 (1930). It runs parallel to the river Lippe. The canal has six locks, at Friedrichsfeld, Hünxe, Dorsten, Flaesheim, Ahsen and Datteln. The main ports along the canal are in Marl (Chemiepark Marl and Auguste-Victoria).

Düsseldorf is one of the five Regierungsbezirke of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, located in the north-west of the country. It covers the western part of the Ruhr Area, as well as the Niederrheinische Tiefebene, the lower Rhine area. It is the most populated of all German administrative areas of the kind. It is the only area in Germany where the traditional dialects are Low Franconian, rather than Low German or High German.

It was created as a subdivision of the Prussian Rhineland when Prussia reformed its internal administration in 1815. In 1822 the Regierungsbezirk Kleve was incorporated into Regierungbezirk Düsseldorf.