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  • To create Oregon’s first preserve in 1963, Camassia Natural Area in West Linn, volunteers scraped together $9,000 to acquire 22.5 acres. To meet the deadline, one board member took out a personal bank loan, putting up his own bonds as collateral.
  • The group of volunteers who started the Oregon chapter of the Conservancy decided to inventory Oregon’s important natural areas — something never before done. The treasurer reported $74.50 available to support that effort.
  • Cascade Head is a spectacular coastal headland. In the 1960s, it was part of a cattle ranch slated for housing development. Today, thanks to help from partners, it’s a grassland sanctuary for silverspot butterflies and one of the most widely visited preserves in the state.
     
  • Originating in the snowfields of Mt. Hood, and fed by rivers like the Salmon, pictured above, the Sandy is the last undeveloped western Oregon river near a metropolitan area and we began work there in the late 1960s.
  • When the Diack family gave the Conservancy a 156-acre gem along the Sandy River in 1970, they triggered a chain of events and, eventually, legislation that protects a 40-mile corridor as a wild and scenic river.
A look back: the 1960s
Celebrating 50 years in Oregon