Canoes: A Natural History in North America

Rice Lake Canoe Company catalog from 1900.

J. Henry Rushton listed the Nessmuk in his 1907 catalog under the heading, “Feather-Weight Canoes.”

Frederic Remington illustration of a Rushton American Traveling Canoe.

A postcard advertising the J. H. Rushton canoe exhibit at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago, 1893.

Rushton’s Indian Girl canoe could be ordered in sizes ranging from fifteen to eighteen feet.

E. M. White Company catalog cover from 1915 showing a courting canoe.

Several of the beautiful color designs available in 1926 for Old Town canoes.

Railroad advertising, such as this 1920 poster by Walter L. Greene, attracted tourists to Lake Placid. An overnight train from New York City brought visitors, rested and fed, to the edge of the Adirondacks.

The labels of Abiel Bickmore’s salve and powder that cured sores on work horses. The Bickmore powder, backed in 1884 by Herbert and George Gray, gave the Gray family national distribution experience that they used in marketing canoes.

An illustrated view of the Old Town factory appeared in the company catalogs.

Kennebec Canoe Catalog cover.

When this Carleton Canoe catalog cover was published in 1924, Carleton canoes were built in the Old Town factory.

Between the years of 1917 and 1919, women changed seats with their male canoe partners on the covers of the Morris company catalogs.

Between the years of 1917 and 1919, women changed seats with their male canoe partners on the covers of the Morris company catalogs.

The Old Town Canoe Company celebrated the end of the First World War in 1919 with a military-themed catalog cover.

By 1923, images of women paddling canoes were prominent on the covers of catalogs produced by Old Town and other makers.

Canoes, as popular as they were, became symbols for benefits like quiet, smooth rides—on calm days, of course.

The Linkcanoe was another attempt at perfecting what was already a pretty perfectly designed boat, in the 1940s.

The old-line canoe builder Old Town expanded into the fiberglass market in the 1960s. This advertisement, for its Rushton model, claimed a weight of 18.5 pounds on the 10-foot solo boat. Cost was $195.

Sometimes canoe manufacturers went to extreme lengths to tout the quality of their synthetic canoes. In this case, Old Town dropped a Tripper model off of the roof of its plant in Old Town, Maine, to show it could take a punch and more-or-less snap right back to straight again.