The Bend Park Company advertises, without the emblem

A fortnight after publishing the emblem, the company that owned its copyright ran a full advertisement and left it out.

The Bend Park Company had published the emblem on July 3 over a notice claiming the brand as its own. Two weeks later it advertised at length in the same paper, in plain type, and left it out.

The advertisement is a column of body copy under a headline set in the paper’s own display type: five months of trading, upwards of 1,100 lots sold, the Great Northern quoted on Bend’s future as “the center of a great farming community”, lots at $150 to $300 on ten dollars down and ten a month, and “a very attractive illustrated folder on BEND, which they will mail upon request” — issued the same month the emblem appeared.

Then it signs off, and the sign-off is the evidence. Between the body copy and the company’s name sits a printer’s ornament: a decorative cartouche out of the compositor’s case, the generic sort any advertisement might carry. That is the place a house mark goes, and two weeks after buying a full page to claim a brand, the company that owned it put a stock ornament there instead.

That fits everything else the record shows. The emblem was the town’s device rather than any company’s house mark, and not even its copyright holder treated it as a logo.