Bend Emblem

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At the gate of the water plant

City of Bend · July 15, 2026

In the story: 8. Carrying it forward, since 2022.

A circular sign carrying the BEND emblem in relief, above a stone base reading City of Bend.
The entrance sign, from a frame of the City's July 2026 reel. City of Bend · documentary reproduction Examine the original

The emblem cut in relief and set on a stone base at the entrance to the city's water filtration facility.

The City filmed a reel at the Outback Water Filtration Facility in July 2026 and the camera passes its entrance sign: a circular disc, the emblem in relief, mounted above a stone base that reads City of Bend / Utility Department / OUTBACK WATER FACILITY. A chain-link fence and ponderosa are behind it.

This is the emblem doing the plainest job it has: telling you whose gate you are at. It is also, with the council chambers disc, one of only two physical municipal objects carrying the mark that this archive holds at all — the rest of the City's use is files.

The drawing is the bureau roundel, the City's current construction, with the arched third letter clearly resolved across the frames.

Measured

The bureau roundel, the notched construction. Narrow letters, a notched E and a notched B at the same height, an arched third letter, and rounded corners.

Read at medium confidence from 130 px of letter.

Not measured. The letters are cut in relief and their groove throws a shadow, so what thresholds as ink is the letter plus a crescent of shade on one side of it. The measurement then reports the light. Its principal axis came out at −53 degrees on a word 1.03 wide for 1 tall, which is the artefact the tilt rule exists to catch, and the angle moved to −51, −37 and −21 as the device box was nudged by six pixels: an axis that moves with the crop is the crop's. The ring behaves the same way, re-entering the mask at three of the five cuts. Read by eye instead; the characters are in the matrix and the arched third letter is not in doubt. Excluding a drawing is itself a finding, so it is recorded rather than estimated.

Compare this drawing with another · The board · How the drawings were measured

Seen in use

One dated sighting, 2026. Each is a record of this object or this drawing somewhere else, and where a picture is hosted it is a documentary crop of the object, credited to whoever holds it.

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