It's up five stories at the tip top of the Hotel North Bend facade, peeking out from beneath the faded painted hotel name. Passersby can faintly see part of it. The word "Bay" is visible in the lower right hand corner.

It's no practical joke - the Hotel North Bend was once called Hotel Coos Bay.

In fact, it had two names three times, alternating Coos Bay with North Bend.

"I don't think I ever found motivation for the change," said historian Dick Wagner.

Perhaps disappointing to steadfast allegiants of either city, the name change had nothing to do with town rivalry since Marshfield wasn't dedicated with the name Coos Bay until 1944.

North Bend Mayor Rick Wetherell said he didn't want to take a stab at an answer, except to clarify his political stance.

"I'm not into rivalry," he said, laughing.

The name-change answer is better left to historians, he said.

One historian

Pat Choat-Pierce, a North Bend resident since 1936, who taught at the high school for 38 years, knows the answer.

The Hotel North Bend opened May 3, 1922. Fourteen years later, new owners Hazel and Jim Collier of Powers gave it a new name. They were trying to attract air travelers for the new commercial air service at the airport in North Bend. The airport, then called Coos Bay Airport, was in the same general location as Southwest Oregon Regional Airport today. Both the airport and the hotel had names tied to the bay itself.

"The building was really involved in North Bend air history," Choat-Pierce explained. "They felt Hotel Coos Bay would have a more recognizable name."

The Colliers barely beat a potential buyer of the Tioga Building in Marshfield, who wanted to use the name, according to Wagner's book, "North Bend Between the World Wars: 1919-1941."

Choat-Pierce has a copy of a National Register of Historic Places registration - the 87-year-old tudor revival-style building made the National Register in 2005, North Bend's first building so honored - which indicates commercial air service in North Bend started in 1930.

Many of the early meetings between airline executives took place over meals at the North Bend Hotel, according to the document. Vern Gorst, the inventor of the dune buggy, the owner of a trout farm and an amphibian plane, was instrumental in bringing in air service. Choat-Pierce knew Gorst. She was best friends with his adopted daughter, Joyce.

A gathering of diners

"In 1925, Vern Gorst, local pioneer of ground, waterway and air transportation, called together a group of West Coast bus service operators for dinner at the North Bend Hotel," the document said.

From this meeting the first airmail route was established on Pacific Air Transport, owned by Gorst.

"Pacific Air Transport also carried an occasional passenger riding uncomfortably atop the mail sacks."

In 1930, Gorst "called together the top executives of Boeing Air Transport, Varney Air Lines and National Air Transport," it said. "Along with his Pacific Air Transport they merged the major aviation giants of the time, officially chartered with the federal government in 1931 to form United Airlines.

"Many of those planned meetings took place over meals at the North Bend Hotel."

Those were the days.

Bennett Air Transport of Tacoma, Wash., provided the first scheduled charter service from the airport in 1930. Daily flights left Coos Bay Airport at 8:30 a.m., making stops in Cottage Grove, Springfield, Corvallis, Salem and arrived in Portland at 10:50 a.m. The return trip would leave Portland at 2:40 p.m. and arrive in North Bend at 5 p.m. One-way fare was $18 and reservations had to be made 30 minutes in advance.

"On November 11, A.A. Bennett, company president, and Elbert Parmeter, vice president, arrived in North Bend with a planeload of dignitaries to mark the official beginning of air service. Locally prominent men and women held a large formal dinner for them at the North Bend Hotel."

Links to the past

In July 2008 when the airport contracted with a new airline, United Express, it was the first time a United aircraft flew into the airport in more than 70 years, Choat-Pierce said.

But that doesn't explain the name change back to Hotel North Bend. That happened in 1959, and Choat-Pierce knows that story, too.

"It was a change in ownership at that time," Choat-Pierce said. "It was a matter of wanting to identify it was in North Bend. It was a kind of returning to its roots."