Gorge conservation group gets $4 million

PORTLAND – A conservation group that wants to buy land to help protect views in the Columbia Gorge from development was surprised to learn it had been left $4 million.

Norman Yeon, son of an Oregon lumber and real estate baron, quietly left half of a cash estate worth about $8 million to the Friends of the Columbia Gorge early last year.

Many of the Portland group’s members first learned of the gift at a meeting on Sunday. Friends of the Columbia Gorge, credited with creation of the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area, has roughly 5,000 members.

The gift may be the largest unconditional donation to a conservation group in the state.

It comes after directors of the group decided they should start buying gorge land to protect vistas, but were limited by a $650,000 annual budget. The issue of gorge development has since heated up after the passage of Measure 37, which requires landowners to be compensated for restrictions that affect property value.

Friends of the Columbia Gorge hopes the gift will become part of a larger fund to buy properties that federal managers cannot afford or shy away from.

“We need to use it as efficiently as possible, but we also need to use it soon because the threats get worse every year,” said group founder Nancy Russell.

The other half of Yeon’s estate will go to Reed College to create a humanities endowment named for his parents. He also left 110 beachfront acres to the Trust for Public Land.

Yeon’s father, John Baptiste Yeon, came to Oregon in 1885 at age 20. Starting as a logger, the elder Yeon went on to find considerable success in the lumber industry and Portland real estate.

Norman Yeon led a quiet life, spending winters in San Francisco and summers on the Oregon coast. But he carried his father’s love for the land. He died in January 2004 at age 88.

Friends of the Columbia Gorge will look at nearly 2,000 acres with willing sellers that the U.S. Forest Service, which manages the gorge, has been unable to buy. “I feel like this gift didn’t say, ‘I support you,’ ” said executive director Kevin Gorman. “It said, ‘You need to do more.’ “