Yeon was French-Canadian and – like Governor Oswald West – had immigrated from Ontario. Unlike West, he had received no formal schooling, and upon his arrival at the age of seventeen, he spoke almost no English. He had very little money, but he was willing to work hard for little pay and built up his vocabulary by listening. "It came naturally to me to lend an ear to people who knew more than I did," Yeon said. "I used to stand and listen to people talk and kept building up my English all the time."
From a twenty-six-dollar-a-month job in an Ohio logging camp, Yeon eventually made his way to Astoria, where he obtained his first experience in construction work and became a teamster at a hundred dollars a month. He went on to manage a logging camp in Washington State and then struck out on his own. That decision soon paid off.
"One of the finest, largest logging camps in the Pacific Northwest is that of Yeon and Pelton, who employ over 150 men winter and summer," the Rainier Review reported in the summer of 1905. "The mammoth logging camp is located about three miles from Rainier."
Always on the ground with his men, he lived by a slogan that he carried through the construction of the highway: "In the employment of labor, the result depends on whether you say, 'Come on boys,' or 'Go on boys.' That's all."
In 1911, Yeon disposed of his lumber holdings and relocated to Portland, where he wielded considerable influence and continued to give generously of his time and energy. It was hardly surprising the Sam Hill prevailed upon him to accept the position of Multnomah County Roadmaster.
What is surprising was that Yeon served without pay, giving more than two years of his time during the building of the road in Multnomah County and campaigning tirelessly on behalf of the entire highway. While Yeon was on the job, one observer noted, he wore out "two automobiles and dozens of tires."
He was in active charge of the road construction, with the exception of the bridges and surfacing. Like his friend and contemporary Simon Benson, Yeon (popularly referred to as "The Millionaire Roadmaster") had spent years harvesting timber in Clatsop and Columbia Counties, and familiarity to the terrain and people of those areas made his advice invaluable to highway planners.
With the assistance of his "first lieutenant" Amos Benson (son of Simon Benson), Yeon oversaw 2,200 workers and held them to the strict standards dictated by principal engineer Samuel Lancaster. "His sagacity and love of the beautiful enabled him to grasp the meaning of my plan," wrote Lancaster, "and thus to decide important matters corrected and with great dispatch."
Perhaps because he had missed out on formal schooling, Yeon made sure his four children were properly educated. "Money," he explained, "can get away from you. But an education can neither be lost nor mortgaged. If you have it, you can always start over."
John B. Yeon later served on the Oregon State Highway Commission from 1920 to 1923. A park named after him, located about a mile west of Bonneville Dam, was dedicated in 1935.
Lancaster, in his book, honors John B. Yeon: "A wealthy and public spirited citizen of Portland, (Yeon) volunteered to give, without renumeration, his entire time to this splendid work... Mr. Yeon's long experience in handling men in lumber camps fitted him admirably for this great task. His sagacity and love of the beautiful enabled him to grasp the meaning of the engineer's plans, and thus to decide important matters correctly and with great dispatch." Yeon directed the actual construction of the highway as Multnomah County Roadmaster. From 1913-1917, Yeon worked on the project for a dollar per year. On August 11, 1915 ["The day before the 'unofficial' opening of the Lower Columbia River Highway, when a group of men prominent in the building of the highway met at the Benson Hotel in Portland," notes Taylor] Julius Meier, President of the Columbia Highway Association, presented Mr. Yeon with a beautiful gold-lined silver loving cup, which bore the inscription:
To
John B. Yeon
Roadmaster, Citizen, Husband, Father, Friend
Who seeking to serve others found a new happiness for himself.
May others drink from this never failing cup and find the draft as sweet.
Portland, Oregon
August 11, 1915.
The names of the donors were engraved on the reverse side. These included the names of the prominent citizens of Portland who had initiated, supported and helped bring to fruition the construction of the Columbia River Highway:
Amos S. Benson, Simon Benson, H. L. Bowlby, Samuel Hill, Rufus C. Holman, C. S. Jackson, Samuel Lancaster, Julius H. Meyer, Frank Terrace, Oswald West, John F. Carroll, H. L. Pittock