The Iron Horse is a 1924 American silent Western film directed by John Ford and produced by Fox Film. It was a major milestone in Ford's career, and his lifelong connection to the western film genre. It was Ford's first major film, in part because the hastily planned production went over budget, as Fox was making a hurried response to the success of another studio's western. In 2011, this film was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.