JOHN WESLEY ILIFF

Ben Dugan
GCN Historical Writer

2/2/2006 - John Wesley Iliff was born in Ohio in December of 1831. He was educated at Ohio Wesleyan College and received an offer from his father to invest $7,500 in the family farm; he asked for $500 and requested that his father let him go west. After a short-lived mercantile career, he came to Colorado with the Gold Rush of 1859, along with thousands of other pioneers in search of a new beginning. The Panic of 1857 had a devastating effect on many families nationwide and many were willing to pick up and relocate.

  After an unsuccessful stint at the gold fields in Central City, Iliff moved to the northern plains and became a cattle rancher. He had an idea to buy weary cattle from newly arrived travelers, fatten them up on the expanse of grasslands on the eastern plains and then sell them to the mining camps. In 1861, Iliff started his first cow camp on Crow Creek near present day Greeley and later settled a ranch near Fort Morgan.

  There were many Indian problems to contend with. The Indians had burned Fort Sedgwick at Julesburg in January 1865 and the hostile feelings continued when the Union Pacific Railroad commenced with slaughtering hundreds of thousands of Buffalo to clear out the Indians’ livelihood and make way for the era of the railroad.

  After dealing with these initial problems, Iliff thrived. He purchased land with good water and was able to gain vast amounts of grasslands in Colorado and Wyoming and became a cattle baron. Before he died in 1878, Iliff set up a school to train young ministers to spread the word of God in the new West. It still exists today on the campus of the University of Denver – founded by John Evans in 1864. John Wesley Iliff was initially buried at Riverside Cemetery but was later relocated to Fairmount Cemetery in 1892.