Rio Grande is a 1950 Western film. It is the third installment of John Ford's "cavalry trilogy," following two RKO Pictures releases: Fort Apache (1948) and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949).

John Wayne stars in all three films, as Captain Kirby York in Fort Apache, then as Captain of Cavalry Nathan Cutting Brittles in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, and finally as a promoted Lieutenant Colonel Kirby Yorke in Rio Grande (scripts and production billing spell the York/Yorke character's last name differently in Fort Apache and Rio Grande).

The film is based on a short story "Mission With No Record" by James Warner Bellah, that appeared in The Saturday Evening Post on September 27, 1947, and the screenplay was written by James Kevin McGuinness.