"According to the Colorful Community Connections Steering Committee, the hydrant painters are nearly done. Colorfully painted hydrants now dot the landscape from the McCullough Bridge to the south end of Coos Bay, and from the Charleston Marina down Cape Arago Highway to Empire and down Newmark."
On September 1, 2007 we started photographing all the decorated hydrants we could find. Since they were first created in the late summer of 2006, we have enjoyed driving past them. Recently we noticed that some of them are showing signs of deterioration due to the rain and the elements. Not knowing if anyone has collected photographs of all of them, and hating to lose this wonderful community expression, we decided to commemorate the work of the various artists responsible for these colorful hydrants. Originally there were to be 144. There are now 127 that we were able to find which seemed to have paint jobs other than the regular blue and yellow. We hope you will enjoy sharing them with us and that you'll tell others about this site. Enjoy!
June and Janet, Coos Bay, OR
PCs - point to a photo for more information. Doesn't work for Macs - sorry
We spotted 37 different "paint jobs" on 101 between the Human Bean and the wood chip piles south of the Mill.
These are on 101 South after the highway divides and we're moving north to south here.
If you enjoyed seeing these photos, please sign the guest book and let us know about your visit.
To our surprise and disappointment, we learned that all the North Bend hydrants (with these two exceptions which are on 101) had already been painted over by the time we were taking our photos (late summer 2007). The contract was for one year and North Bend repaints their hydrants every summer. Sadly, these two were painted over during the summer of 2008. Thanks to Bob More, one of the original committee members, we have been able to add photos of the North Bend hydrants. We don't know where they were originally located, but at least we now have photos of them. Click on the paint smear above to go to the North Bend page.
Lakeside has now started a similar project with some of their hydrants, but we don't have photos of them - yet. Keep checking back - you never know when we'll get out there...
