resaca

noun

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.

   “The road lay over dark resacas and running streams, where volcanic rocks rose above each other^([sic]), and every detour might have been made a fortress.”

   “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.””

   “A resaca is an old river channel that was probably cut off by an overflow scouring out a new and more direct course. Some of them were originally short loops in the river, but others are many miles in extent. Their top width varies from about 150 to 350 feet and their depth from 4 or 5 to 20 feet.”

   “Where resacas (a “resaca” is an old abandoned river channel sometimes many miles in extent) have been used for storage purposes for several years, seepage almost invariably appears within the area of the more pervious soils.”

   “At 10 p. m., two miles west of Brownsville, in a resaca, found these frogs in small bushes, in weedy clumps, and even grassy tangles in overflowed tomato field adjoining the overflowed resaca.”

2. (Texas)A small body of water.