resaca

From Spanish resaca, probably from resacar (“retake”), though possibly from rio seco (“dry river”) instead.

resaca (plural resacas)

1. A dry river bed, a former channel of the Rio Grande, found in the southern half of Cameron County, Texas and deep into northeastern portions of the State of Tamaulipas, Mexico.
   • 1848, Fayette Robinson, An Account of the Organization of the Army of the United States; with Biographies of Distinguished Officers of All Grades, volume 2, Philadelphia: E. H. Butler, pages 258–9:

     The road lay over dark resacas and running streams, where volcanic rocks rose above each other, and every detour might have been made a fortress.

     (The term was printed in italics and used as a foreign word.)

   • 1897 December, H. F. Wickham, “The Coleoptera of the Lower Rio Grande Valley”, in Bulletin From the Laboratories of Natural History of the State University of Iowa, volume 4, number 2, Iowa City, IA, page 97:

     Here and there along the river-bottom, or along the sloughs or “resacas” are found, as Mr. Schwarz has elsewhere stated, “isolated stripes of larger or smaller extent, covered with a dense forest having a thick undergrowth of varied shrubbery and a rich vegetation of lower plants, the like of which is not seen in any other place in southwestern Texas.”