Río de Oro (Spanish for "Gold River", Arabic: وادي الذهب wādī-að-ðahab, often transliterated as Oued Edhahab), is, with Saguia el-Hamra, one of the two territories that formed the Spanish province of Spanish Sahara after 1969; it was originally 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 formerly. The river was thought to have largely dried out - a wadi, as the name indicates - or have disappeared underground.