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[[File:Morocco_Protectorate.svg|thumb|Río de Oro is located at the bottom of this map of North Western Africa during the Spanish colonization.]]
[[File:Western sahara landscape.jpg|thumb|Desolate landscape terrain in the Río de Oro region, near the town of [[Guerguerat]]]]
'''Río de Oro''' ([[Spanish language|Spanish]] for "[[Gold]] River", [[Arabic language|Arabic]]: وادي الذهب ''wādī-að-ðahab'', often transliterated as Oued Edhahab) is, with [[Saguia el-Hamra]], one of the two territories that formed the [[Spain|Spanish]] province of [[Spanish Sahara]] after 1969; 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.
Derived from its previous name ''Rio do Ouro'', given to it by its discoverer [[Afonso Gonçalves Baldaia]] in 1436, Portuguese seafarers applied it to the area, although no gold had been found there, neither in the water of the narrow gulf, probably mistaken for the river itself, nor in its neighborhood.
Occupying the southern part of [[Western Sahara]], the territory lies between 26° to the north and 21° 20' to the south. The area is roughly 71,042 mi.<sup>2</sup> (184,000 km²), making it approximately two-thirds of the entire territory. The former provincial capital founded by the [[Spain|Spanish]] [[colonialism|colonizers]] was Villa Cisneros, which was renamed under Moroccan administration "[[Dakhla, Western Sahara|ad-Dakhla]]".
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