It was the compelling power of towering snowcapped mountains, deep forests, and sharp peaks plunging precipitously into the Pacific Ocean that served as the driving force of John Yeon's life. Born in 1910, he grew up in the shadow of an ambitious father who began as a logger, rose to become a leading figure in Portland, Oregon, and in 1913 supervised the construction of the state's first paved highway along the Columbia Gorge, the nation's first scenic route. Equally important was Yeon's mother, whose pioneering family began as homesteaders in Portland in the 1850s and through whom her son acquired an appreciation of the arts. Thus early on Yeon was drawn to the vast scale and powerful pull of the natural beauty of untouched wilderness—the rugged Oregon coastline, the deep Columbia Gorge with its powerful river, the flora and fauna of the forest—but also to the small scale and refinement of fine art.

Having grown up in privileged circumstances and inherited wealth, Yeon turned to architecture in his late teens. He worked summers in the offices of A. E. Doyle, Portland's largest and most successful architectural firm, whose practice followed the classicizing tradition of McKim, Mead & White, and in the office of the Beaux-Arts–trained architect Herman Brookman. Granted access to their extensive libraries of architectural books, Yeon acquired a knowledge of and taste for European traditions at once Palladian and English picturesque. …