Canoes: A Natural History in North America

Hotel Ampersand looms over Lower Saranac Lake in the Adirondacks ca. 1890.

Carson, shown here with American wildlife artist Bob Hines, worked for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Hines illustrated Carson’s book Under the Sea Wind.

Frank S. Nicholson, poster for the National Park Service, c. 1936–1940. This poster is from the NYC Art Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), which sponsored artists of almost all stripes during the Great Depression. Nicholson was among almost ten thousand artists who were supported by the WPA’s Federal Art Project.

Howard Zahniser was a significant figure in the American environmental movement in the 1950s and 1960s. His work on the Wilderness Act of 1964—he is credited with writing most of it—was instrumental in its final passage.

President Lyndon Johnson signs the Wilderness Act on September 3, 1964.

Biologist Aldo Leopold (center) accompanies his son Starker (left) on a canoe trip in the Quetico boundary waters in 1924.

Sigurd Olson, a biologist by training and a canoe outfitter in Ely, Minnesota, was among the important writers and political activists in the environmental movement.

Groups interested in preserving canoe country from development sprang up all over the continent. Canoes were often used as images of a free and quiet outdoors experience, including this poster with artwork by Francis Lee Jaques, ca. 1949.

The National Wild and Scenic River system, signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson in 1968, is an attempt to protect U.S. rivers in their natural state from development as much as possible. More than 12,500 miles of rivers have such protection.

The 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill, seen from above the critical platform, was at the time the worst spill in American history, later surpassed by the Exxon Valdez (1989) and Deepwater Horizon (2010) spills.

A dramatic event that drew more interest to environmental issues was the oil spill off of Santa Barbara, California, in 1969.

Cleveland Mayor Carl Stokes enjoyed a high level of popularity among adults and children during his tenure; his advocacy for clean water extended beyond the Cuyahoga River controversy and included opening up neighborhood pools such as this one at Edgewater Park, on July 4, 1969. Utilities director Ben Stefanski (next to Stokes) joined the mayor for a swim.

A cleanup of the Potomac River via canoe was one of the hundreds of activities featured on the first Earth Day in 1970.

Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson, seen here in the bow of a canoe on the Namekagon River in 1966, is considered the founder of Earth Day. The first Earth Day came in 1970.

The Missouri National Recreation River, established in 1964, is administered by the U.S. National Park Service.

Threats to canoe routes across the continent came (and sometimes went) as industry and government eyed the land for other uses.

In the late 1970s, legislation to ban motors from canoe country in Minnesota was a controversial issue.

The Northern Forest Canoe Trail covers parts of the northeastern United States and eastern Canada, running 740 miles.

Arthur Carhart, next to a Morris canoe at the Superior National Forest in 1920, demonstrates how to stack and carry two canoe packs.