John Turner (1807 – 1847) was an American fur trapper and guide who first entered Oregon Country in 1828 and became an early resident of the Willamette Valley.

[1][a] At the 1827 rendezvous on the southern shore of Bear Lake, Jedediah Smith assembled a party of 18 fur trappers and two Native American women to accompany him on a return trip to California.

While Smith's party crossed the Colorado River at the 35th parallel, a hostile group of Mohave attacked, killing ten trappers and capturing the two women.

[4] In June 1828 the party began trading with the Lower Umpqua people, a Native American community known to early writers as the Kalawatset.

On the morning of July 14, 1828, Smith, Turner, Richard Leland, and a Kalawatset were off in a canoe searching for an overland route north when their camp was attacked.

[17] [f] In the 1830s, settlers in the Willamette Valley petitioned the United States Congress to take an active role in promoting American interests in the Oregon Country.

[19] After the Willamette Valley settlers created the Provisional Government, Turner sold his property to John Phillips for $100 and moved to California.

[20] In his remarks at the tenth annual reunion of the Oregon Pioneer Association in 1882, association president J. W. Nesmith stated, "The old Kentucky giant, John Turner, so well known and famed for his herculean strength, good nature, quaint oddities and dauntless courage, through the Rocky mountains, New Mexico, California and Oregon, from 1823 to 1847, was killed in the latter year in California by the accidental discharge of his own rifle.