Boondocks

This is American slang from the early 20th century for an isolated, remote region, the sticks or the middle of nowhere. It was a word originally picked up by US Marines in the Philippine Islands after the Spanish-American War of 1898. The word derives from bundoc, from the Filipino Tagalog dialect that actually means mountain but came to be associated with remote areas by the troops. It appears that the word was re-discovered by greater numbers of American troops serving in the Philippines in World War II, which explains the popularity and wider usage of the word from that time onwards.