John Wright Hickenlooper (born February 7, 1952) is the Mayor of the City and County of Denver, Colorado.

Hickenlooper was born in Narberth, Pennsylvania and is a graduate of Wesleyan University where he received a B.A. in English in 1974 and a master’s degree in geology in 1980. His wife, Helen Thorpe, is a writer whose work has been published in The New Yorker, New York Times Magazine, George, and Texas Monthly. They currently live in Denver's Park Hill neighborhood.

Before becoming mayor in June 2003 he was a geologist turned entrepreneur: in addition to being a real estate developer, he is also the owner of several restaurants. He is generally considered one of the main people responsible for the success of the LoDo urban renewal period during the early 1990s. Hickenlooper owned several restaurants in LoDo in the late 1980s, before the area's renewal. He was one of the founders of the original Wynkoop Brewing Company microbrewery; these and others were central to the redevelopment of the area following the arrival of major league baseball in the neighborhood. The area had been known to be dangerous; Hickenlooper is quoted as saying, "I must've had rocks in my head." The rent for Wynkoop's real estate was $1 per square foot per year.