Wikipedia
A buffalo wallow or bison wallow is a natural topographical depression in the flat prairie land that holds rain water and runoff.
Originally this would have served as a temporary watering hole for wildlife, including the American bison. Wallowing buffalo that drank from and bathed in these naturally occurring shallow water holes gradually changed the pristine watering hole into a buffalo wallow. Each time they went away, they carried mud with them from the hole, thus enlarging the wallow. Furthermore, wallowing action caused abrasion of hair, natural body oils and cellular debris from their hides and left the debris in the water and especially in the soil after the water evaporated. Every year the debris accumulated in the soil in increasing concentration and formed a water-impenetrable layer that prevented the rain water and runoff from percolating into the lower layers of the soil. Ultimately the water remained for long periods which attracted more wildlife. Even when stagnant, the water would be eagerly drunk by thirsty animals. Though thriving buffalo herds roamed and grazed the great prairies of North America for thousands of years, they have left few permanent markings on the landscape to recall their past presence. Exceptions are the somewhat rare yet still visible ancient buffalo wallows found occasionally on the North American prairie flatlands.
Buffalo wallows are also made by the Asian water buffalo and the African buffalo.
In 1953, the writer Charles Tenney Jackson (1874–1955) published The Buffalo Wallow: A Prairie Childhood, an autobiographical novel about two boys (cousins) growing up during pioneer days in an almost empty stretch of Nebraska, where their favorite hideaway is a buffalo wallow.
Usage examples of "buffalo wallow".
They rode right up to that buffalo wallow bold as brass and sat their horses grinning at me, and I was never so glad to see anybody.
He jumped down, pulled his rifle and cartridge rolls clear of the horse and dropped them in the buffalo wallow.
It was a considerable way that he had walked before he came to a buffalo wallow and, a little way off, spied a herd.
Besides the buffalo wallow and the bumps I'd discovered before, a gully cut through one part, hidden by the grass.
King Mabry wormed his way out of the buffalo wallow and went up the slope to the dead Sioux.
She was well-named Aphrodite, with those long black, tapering legs and rounded rump and lissom waist, and when she turned to face me, wriggling her torso-well, I've never looked at a pumpkin since without thinking: buffalo wallow.
Gates had profited by my advice and they had forted up, and had done a better job than I'd expected, for they had gone back to the edge of the brush near a buffalo wallow and had dug sod to build a parapet.
Which they did, sitting patiently in a dusty buffalo wallow, as though we were of no concern -- which meant they had scrutinized us carefully and judged us harmless.
A large calf turned viciously on Sitting Bull, whose pony had thrown him, but the alert youth got hold of both ears and struggled until the calf was pushed back into a buffalo wallow in a sitting posture.
A buffalo wallow had probably began it, and water running from the knoll, had over the years cut the gully deeper with every rain.
Many Swans lay in a buffalo wallow and hid, and a white fog slid down from the North and covered the prairie.
Like the time he and Red Jenkins had fought Comanches from a buffalo wallow.
He had killed a man in Tascosa who called him a liar and he killed four Indians who trapped him in a buffalo wallow north of Adobe Walls.