POST Receives $1 Million Gift From Bill and
Jean Lane
September 8, 2005
Ambassador L. William Lane, Jr. and his wife, Jean, have donated $1 million to the Peninsula Open Space Trust to support its land-saving efforts on the San Mateo County coast.
The gift from the Lanes benefits POST's $200 million and 20,000-acre Saving the Endangered Coast campaign, the largest land protection initiative ever undertaken by a local land trust. The Lanes' $1 million contribution pushes POST's campaign past the $190 million mark.
Bill Lane is the former longtime publisher of Sunset magazine and retired co-chairman of the board of Lane Publishing Co., now the Sunset Publishing Corporation owned by Time Warner. His professional career also includes numerous government assignments at all levels of government, including past presidential appointments as U.S. ambassador to Australia and ambassador at large in Japan.
Jean Lane, a docent at Stanford University's Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve, has devoted much of her life to conservation causes. She has served on the boards of the National Tropical Botanical Garden, the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., and the Filoli Center, a National Trust for Historic Preservation property in Woodside, Calif.
In recognition of the Lanes' extraordinary generosity, POST has named a scenic meadow on its Portola Lookout property off Skyline Ridge in the Santa Cruz Mountains in their honor. A clearing on the property will now be known as the Bill and Jean Lane Meadow at the Portola Lookout.
"Bill and Jean have been with POST since the beginning, and a gift from them of this magnitude is truly inspiring," said POST President Audrey Rust. "We are enormously grateful for all they have done for POST and for their incredibly generous gift to this campaign, especially now when we need it the most. We are in the final stretch of fund raising, with a deadline of December 31, and the Lanes' gift provides urgently needed dollars for conservation of threatened lands along the San Mateo Coast."
Residents of Portola Valley, the Lanes have long championed the environment and have been staunch supporters of national and state parks for more than half a century. Their contributions to California parkland have helped protect and enhance many of the state's most precious natural and cultural resources. Bill is one of two individuals to be both an honorary National Park Ranger and a California State Park Ranger.
Bill and Jean were among POST's founding donors and have stepped in at critical points in a number of POST's land conservation projects. For the past 13 years, they have also underwritten POST's Wallace Stegner Lecture Series, named for their good friend Wallace Stegner, the late Pulitzer Prize-winning author and environmentalist.
The tree-ringed meadow named in honor of the Lanes is part of Portola Lookout, a 50-acre POST property located just west of Skyline Boulevard between Page Mill Road and Highway 9. It is adjacent to the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District's Long Ridge Open Space Preserve and is highly visible from scenic roadways and surrounding parks.
The land affords stunning views of Skyline Preserve, Portola State Park, Butano Ridge, Big Basin State Park and Pescadero County Park-more than 7,000 acres of parkland. Mindego Hill, an extinct volcano, can be seen clearly from the property, with views of the Pacific Ocean in the distance. Its 2,200-foot-high mountain knoll made it an attractive site for an estate home until POST acquired it in November 2003. POST hopes eventually to transfer the property to MROSD for public access and inclusion in the Long Ridge Open Space Preserve.