Cecil Henry Clinkard (1862 – 24 March 1941) was a United Party Member of Parliament in New Zealand, and the first mayor of Rotorua.

His father, Thomas Clinkard, was the first European settler at Makarau on the Kaipara Harbour, where for three years his mother did not set eyes on a white woman.

He took up large tracts of bush country and then worked out the timber, having it towed to Wairoa, from where it got shipped to London, Sydney, Adelaide, and the southern ports of New Zealand.

[4] Clinkard first stood in a general election in 1905 for the Liberal Party, when he challenged the incumbent in the Waitemata electorate, Ewen Alison.

[21][22] A year later, Cecil Clinkard died on 24 March 1941 aged 79 at Rotorua after a long illness.