The Portland Women’s Forum was organized in 1946 for the dissemination of information concerning civic, state, national and international affairs.
In 1950, after a Sunday drive up the Columbia River Highway, Gertrude Glutsch Jensen came to a Portland Women’s Forum meeting and told us that the loggers and mills were despoiling the “Great Gorge of the Mighty Columbia River”, as she called it. She was heartsick over what she had seen. She felt that the State of Oregon or the federal government could help in exchanging timber land in the Gorge for timber elsewhere. The Portland Women’s Forum established the Columbia River Gorge as it’s principal and permanent project. We wrote letters and went to meetings with the Oregon State Legislature asking for their help. Gertrude was the powerhouse behind all this. She even went back to Washington DC at her own expense to get help from Congress.
In 1953, the Oregon Legislature created a three member Columbia River Gorge Commission with Gertrude Glutsch Jensen as chairman. She served in this capacity for sixteen years. Thousands of acres of land were acquired by public agencies through donations to the state, and land exchanges by the Bureau of Land Management, Mt. Hood National Forest and Hood River County.
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PWF installed a drinking fountain at the park in memory of Gertrude Glutsch Jensen.
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When the Columbia Gorge Interpretive Center opened in Stevenson, Washington, in 1994, the PWF donated three hand-crafted fir benches in memory of Gertrude Glutsch Jensen to be placed in the lobby.