Río de Oro

Today part ofWestern Sahara

Desolate landscape terrain in the Río de Oro region, near the town of Guerguerat Stamp of Rio de Oro issued in 1907. Río de Oro ( Spanish: [ˈri.o ðe ˈoɾo] , Spanish for "River of Gold"; Arabic: وادي الذهب, Wādī-aḏ-Ḏāhab, often transliterated as Oued Edhahab) is the southern geographic region of Western Sahara. It was, with Saguia el-Hamra, one of the two territories that formed the Spanish province of Spanish Sahara after 1958; it had been taken as a Spanish colonial possession in the late 19th century. Its name seems to come from an east–west river which was supposed to have run through it. The river was thought to have largely dried out – a wadi, as the name indicates – or have disappeared underground.