John Wesley Prowers (January 29, 1838 – February 14, 1884) was an American trader, cattle rancher, legislator, and businessman in the territory and state of Colorado.

The Prowers House—which operated as a stagecoach station, general store, school, county office, and hotel—is one of the two Boggsville properties listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

After the railroads came to the area, he moved to Las Animas and established a store, helped found a bank, and, with Charles Goodnight, co-founded a meat packing plant.

[1][2][a] As a young boy, he acquired a stepfather when his mother married John Vogil, who was hard on his stepson.

[1] When he was eighteen years of age, he was hired by Robert Miller who was an agent for Cheyenne, Arapaho, Kiowas, Comanche, and Apache tribes of the upper Arkansas area.

Their wagon contained annuity goods—sugar, oatmeal, bacon, salt, beans, coffee, cornmeal, and other goods—which Miller and Prowers passed out to Native Americans who came to the fort.

[1] Robison Malory Moore, husband of William Bent's daughter, Mary, settled at the mouth of the Purgatoire River in 1860.

Anthony supported their goal for peace and the Cheyenne leaders explained that the young men were planning on leaving on a buffalo hunt.

[1] Soldiers from the fort arrived at the Prowers home and held the family and ranch hands hostages for 2 and a half days before the Sand Creek massacre on November 29, 1864,[1] in which Chief Ochinee and 160 people from the village, mostly women and children, died.

[8][11][12][d] He purchased some of his land for his cattle ranching from the half-Native American children who received war reparations following the Sand Creek massacre (1864) and from local whites.

[3] The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway (AT&SF) came to Colorado in 1873 and its tracks ran along a border of the Prowers ranch.

[16] The Prowers had 15,000 head of cattle and had acquired more land so that they had 30 miles of waterfront alongside the Arkansas River by 1881.

[2] After living first at Bent's Fort, John and his wife operated a stagecoach station at their home in Caddoa, Colorado.

John helped found the Bent County Bank and established the commission house of Prowers & Hough,[2][14] which received goods delivered to him in Las Animas and he had delivered to merchants in southeastern Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona—until railroad service extended deeper into Colorado.

[1] During his winter 1862 trip to Missouri, Prowers left Amache with his aunt in Westport and their first child, Mary, was born there on July 18, 1863.

They settled with their baby daughter at a cattle ranch with three stone buildings that Prowers established on Caddoa Creek in the area of Big Timbers.

[3] When the family lived in Boggsville, Native American tribes camped nearby as they visited their relatives, like Amache, who were married to white men.

[2][h] The Cheyenne were keenly aware that the construction of railway lines in Colorado meant an end to their way of life.

[1] In 1880, with an intention to increase the wildlife in the area, Prowers shipped in white-tail deer—three does and two bucks—and turned them loose near his ranch.

As of 1945, white-tailed deer were found in New Mexico, near Trinidad on Fishers Peak, and near where they were originally released along the Arkansas River.

He died there at the home of his sister Mrs. John Simpson Hough on February 14, 1884,[1][5] leaving an estate of $750,000 (equivalent to $25,433,333 in 2023).