What to See in Coos Bay - Top Sights and Attractions

State park in Coos County, Oregon. Sunset Bay State Park is a state park in the U.S. state of Oregon. Administered by the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department, it is about 0.4 miles south of Cape Arago Lighthouse and 2.5 miles outside the town of Charleston on Coos Bay. The park offers a crescent shaped beach, tide pools, hiking trails and a year-round campground.

The park is one of three along the Cape Arago Highway, which runs along the Pacific Ocean west of U.S. Route 101. Sunset Bay State Park is about 1 mile (1.6 km) north of Shore Acres State Park and about 2 miles (3 km) north of Cape Arago State Park. A hiking trail links Sunset Bay to Shore Acres.

Land for the park was acquired in stages through 1984. Coos County donated the original tract to the state in 1948. In 1954, Ralph Barker donated a parcel with a water supply. The Bureau of Land Management later added tracts through a grant to the state, which also bought, exchanged, or otherwise acquired land from private owners. The combined size of the parcels is about 405 acres (164 ha).

Sunset Bay is home to one of Oregon's ghost forests, created by an earthquake on the Cascadia subduction zone that dropped the shoreline about 1,200 years ago. The shoreline contains stumps of drowned spruce trees.^[1]

Movie theatre in Coos Bay, Oregon. The Egyptian Theatre is a historic movie theatre in Coos Bay, Oregon, United States. It was originally built as a garage, and was converted to a theatre in 1925. With a seating capacity of 770, the theatre is an example of the Egyptian Theatre style of Egyptian Revival architecture that was popular in the early 20th century in the U.S. especially following the 1922 discovery of the tomb of King Tut. The building was listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places on May 24, 2010. In fact it was announced as the featured listing in the National Park Service's weekly list of June 4, 2010.

According to the National Park Service:

The Egyptian Revival style of architecture was favored for many years in Europe and popularized in the United States during the 1920s with the discovery of the tomb of King Tutankhamen. The style’s potential for exotic, mysterious theatricality lent itself well to movie palace design of the 1920s, but only four movie palaces in this style are documented as surviving in the United States today. One of those four is the Egyptian Theatre, located at 229 S. Broadway in downtown Coos Bay, Oregon. Originally built in 1922 as a garage and converted in 1925 to a movie palace, the theater is essentially unchanged, possessing its original style décor, light fixtures, and furnishings, including its bronze pharaoh statues, friezes depicting lotus, papyrus, discs, uraei, and ravens, columns painted with hieroglyphics and Egyptionesque characters, a proscenium above the stage featuring a replica of an ancient Egyptian temple, and original curtains and painted backdrops. The Egyptian Theatre is an excellent example of the Egyptian Revival style and it continues to function as a movie palace to this day.^[2]

The Coos Bay National Bank Building is a historic commercial building in Coos Bay, Oregon, United States. Completed in 1924, it is an outstanding example of Beaux-Arts eclecticism with a Classical theme by the architecture firm of Tourtellotte and Hummel. It is especially notable as the only building of its architectural type in the Coos Bay area. Although its design integrity has been compromised somewhat, especially by removal of a low dome over the entrance rotunda and modifications to the surrounds of the entry door, it still conveys the essential character-defining traits of its design. It served as the headquarters of the Coos Bay National Bank from its construction until Coos Bay National Bank merged with U.S. National Bank in 1956. The building remained a branch of U.S. National Bank until 1975. Coos Bay National Bank, a community fixture founded in 1915 as the Scandinavian American Bank, exemplified the trend of ethnic banks in the United States and Scandinavian settlement around Coos Bay. As a business institution it played a leading role in the development of Coos Bay during the period between the world wars and in the city's emergence as a major lumber port. It was the only one of four locally controlled banks to survive the Great Depression.

The building was entered on the National Register of Historic Places in 1989.^[4]