July Jubilee

On the afternoon of Friday, July 17, 2026, about 70 people gathered in the North Bend Public Library to sing Happy Birthday to their city. Four young women of the July Jubilee Ambassador Court led the singing: Tania Aguirre, Amanda Chen, Addison Horning and Karen Lu. The city was 123 years old, and the Ko-Kwel Casino Resort had donated the cake. That is how July Jubilee opens. The City of North Bend holds it on the third weekend of July, with events spread from the Boardwalk on Coos Bay to the bowling alley. Nearly all of them are free.

Cake and myrtlewood plaques

Mayor Jessica Engelke opened the 2026 kick-off and called up the court, which had been crowned at the City Council meeting of July 14. According to The World, the court tradition is as old as the festival, and Engelke herself once served as a Jubilee ambassador. The Honored Citizen Awards followed. Residents nominate the winners, who receive plaques of myrtlewood.

The 2026 Citizen of the Year was Rick Stevens, known as Radio Rick, who broadcast North Bend High School Bulldogs games for 27 years before retiring that year. “I’ve lived here since 1983, and it’s been my desire to serve in any way that I can, both professionally and privately,” Stevens said. Andrew Brainard received the Continuing Contributions award. Business of the Year went to Engles Furniture & Mattress, locally owned since 1963, which makes the store older than the Jubilee. Steve Nye accepted for the store: “We’ve been doing it for 62 years and we’re still trying to get better at it.”

Friday evening is for adults. About 250 people walked the 2026 Sip N Stroll, a wine walk for those 21 and over that starts at the North Bend Visitor Information Center and works through the downtown businesses. Afterward, part of the crowd went up Sherman Avenue to the Liberty Theatre. The theatre opened in 1924 as a silent movie palace and now houses the Little Theatre on the Bay, which a walking-tour guide from Oregon’s Adventure Coast calls Oregon’s second-oldest amateur theater company. Its Little Ole Opry, a country music revue, plays on all three days of the Jubilee, with a Sunday matinee. It is the weekend’s ticketed event. The rest of the crowd went down Virginia Avenue to the Back Alley Pub & Grill, where the local band Gran Torino played the After Stroll.

Saturday, from the Boardwalk to Clyde Allen Field

At 8 a.m. on Saturday, July 18, 2026, 124 runners and walkers set off from the Boardwalk in the July Jubilee Jaunt. The 5K circles several North Bend landmarks and finishes at Grant Circle. In the same hour, the Mustang and Ford Club began lining up cars outside North Bend Lanes for the Show ‘n Shine, and about 100 vehicles came. A disc golf tournament started at 10:30 on the Winsor & Ferry Park course. Through the afternoon, Pony Village Mall held Jump into Jubilee!, with bounce houses, games, face painting, vendors and a balloon drop. The city also lists root beer floats among the weekend’s offerings.

The day ends at Clyde Allen Field with a 6 p.m. softball game between North Bend and Coos Bay, played for the Ian Spalding Memorial Scholarship. Spectators donate to buy runs for their side. The year before, the cross-town rivals won by a score that The World gave as 128 to 208. The 2026 game raised more than $6,000.

A boxcar and a walk on Sunday

The Historic Walking Tour leaves the Visitor Information Center at 10 on Sunday morning and runs two hours. Dick Wagner, a local author and historian, hosts it. He and his wife, Judy Wagner, wrote the Oregon Encyclopedia’s entry on the city. In 2026 the walk became one part of North Bend Main Street’s Downtown Discovery Tours. The North Bend Fire Department gave free fire truck rides, and the Merci Boxcar had its first public showing at its new place beside the Visitor Information Center, where the city is building a micro park.

“That is the hub of all our activity, between Grant Circle and the Visitors Center,” said Stephanie Wilson, North Bend’s Main Street manager.

The boxcar is a narrow-gauge French rail car of the kind called “forty & eight.” The name comes from World War I, when such cars carried 40 men or 8 horses. In 1949 the French people sent one to each state, decorated and filled with gifts, in thanks for American aid after World War II. Oregon’s car came to North Bend in 2006, and the American Legion’s Forty & Eight Society restored it.

The Adventure Coast guide to a historic walk through North Bend lists other stops downtown:

• The Hotel North Bend (1922). J.E. Tourtellotte designed it, and it had 68 rooms. In 1930, Vern Gorst met there with national airline executives and helped form United Air Lines.
• Myrtlewood money. When the First National Bank of North Bend closed temporarily in 1933 and 1934, the city minted its own currency from myrtlewood.
• The Kyle Building. This 1906 wholesale grocery warehouse stands on pilings and is the last building left from the early waterfront.
• The city sign over Highway 101 (1936). It is one of the last legal neon signs over a state highway.

A model of the Western Shore stands at the visitor center. The ship was built at the Simpson shipyard in 1874, and in 1876 she sailed from Portland to Liverpool in 101 days. “She was Oregon’s only clipper ship, she was the last clipper ship built in the United States, and she set speed records in her time,” Wagner told KCBY.

Flags flying in 1983

“The oldest North Bend was a Simpson company town,” Wagner said. “It existed at the end of today’s Ferry Road.” Asa M. Simpson, a Maine shipbuilder drawn west by the California gold rush, came to the north bend of Coos Bay in 1855 and built a sawmill and a shipyard there. His son, Louis Jerome Simpson, arrived in 1899 and joined the townsite of Yarrow to his father’s land. He then served as mayor of the new city from 1903 until 1915. The sources give different dates for the city’s founding:

• July 1903. The World reported in 2003 that Simpson filed incorporation papers that month.
• July 6, 1903. The Oregon Blue Book gives this as the incorporation date.
• December 28, 1903. The city says the legislature passed Senate Bill 5 on this date, officially chartering North Bend.

The town grew from fewer than 200 residents in 1900 to more than 2,000 by 1910.

The question of merging with the city next door is nearly as old as the town. In 1935, according to Oregon Coast Beach Connection, North Bend’s city council turned down a proposal to consolidate with Marshfield. The Oregon Encyclopedia counts six rejections of consolidation with the City of Coos Bay since 1943, the most recent in 2004.

The vote of 1983 produced the Jubilee. Wagner tells it this way: “A number of people got together because of consolidation, and the question was, since there was an election that year, would North Bend survive as a city or not?” They chose to hold a party either way. “It would be a victory party if North Bend defeated consolidation, and it would be going down with our flags flying if we lost.” The city’s own account says the festival began as North Bend prepared for its 80th year as an incorporated city, and that residents reaffirmed the city’s independence after the effort to consolidate failed. Voters kept the city independent, and the celebration became an annual one. The walking-tour guide calls North Bend “the city that believes in itself.”

A month in 2003, and a pause

By 2002, according to a photo caption in The World, classic cars were cruising Virginia Avenue during the Jubilee. For the centennial in 2003, about 20 residents spent more than a year planning a Centennial Jubilee that ran through the whole month of July. City Information Manager Barbara Parker organized it. “The deal was that if you wanted something to be a part of the (North Bend’s) celebration, then you had to be the chairman of that event,” Parker said with a chuckle.

The centennial program included:

• a birthday party at Shore Acres State Park;
• an ice cream social, “Fiddlin’ in the Park,” at Simpson Park;
• a walking tour with Dick and Judy Wagner from Sheridan and Virginia avenues;
• Little Ole Opry shows titled “Keepin’ It Country” and “Ole Barn Buck and Wing”;
• a matinee of Harold Lloyd’s silent film “Speedy,” with Babe Ruth in a cameo, at the Celebration Center on Union Avenue.

The planners also printed a revived issue of the North Bend News to carry the calendar. “One night, I thought ‘Why not do an old newspaper?’” Parker said.

After 2019 the Jubilee stopped because of the COVID-19 pandemic. It returned on July 12–14, 2024, for the city’s 121st birthday. The city’s Special Events Committee revived it, with help from a $3,000 grant from the Coos Bay-North Bend-Charleston Visitor & Convention Bureau, and it opened with a ribbon cutting at Grant Circle. “When it was brought back it was the volunteer dedication, between individuals and organizations, that really sustain this event,” Wilson said.

The city has set the 2027 Jubilee for July 16 to 18, for North Bend’s 124th birthday.