Rice Lake Canoe Company Catalog
From Chapter 4: All-Wood Canoes
University of Michigan needs your feedback to better understand how readers are using openly available ebooks. You can help by taking a short, privacy-friendly survey.
Follow author Mark Neuzil on Twitter: @mrneuzil
From Chapter 4: All-Wood Canoes
Rice Lake Canoe Company catalog from 1900.
From Chapter 4: All-Wood Canoes
J. Henry Rushton listed the Nessmuk in his 1907 catalog under the heading, “Feather-Weight Canoes.”
From Chapter 4: All-Wood Canoes
Frederic Remington illustration of a Rushton American Traveling Canoe.
From Chapter 4: All-Wood Canoes
A postcard advertising the J. H. Rushton canoe exhibit at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago, 1893.
From Chapter 5: Wood-and-Canvas Canoes
Rushton’s Indian Girl canoe could be ordered in sizes ranging from fifteen to eighteen feet.
From Chapter 5: Wood-and-Canvas Canoes
E. M. White Company catalog cover from 1915 showing a courting canoe.
From Chapter 5: Wood-and-Canvas Canoes
Several of the beautiful color designs available in 1926 for Old Town canoes.
From Chapter 5: Wood-and-Canvas 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.
From Chapter 5: Wood-and-Canvas Canoes
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.
From Chapter 5: Wood-and-Canvas Canoes
An illustrated view of the Old Town factory appeared in the company catalogs.
From Chapter 5: Wood-and-Canvas Canoes
Kennebec Canoe Catalog cover.
From Chapter 5: Wood-and-Canvas Canoes
When this Carleton Canoe catalog cover was published in 1924, Carleton canoes were built in the Old Town factory.
From Chapter 5: Wood-and-Canvas Canoes
Between the years of 1917 and 1919, women changed seats with their male canoe partners on the covers of the Morris company catalogs.
From Chapter 5: Wood-and-Canvas Canoes
Between the years of 1917 and 1919, women changed seats with their male canoe partners on the covers of the Morris company catalogs.
From Chapter 5: Wood-and-Canvas Canoes
The Old Town Canoe Company celebrated the end of the First World War in 1919 with a military-themed catalog cover.
From Chapter 5: Wood-and-Canvas Canoes
By 1923, images of women paddling canoes were prominent on the covers of catalogs produced by Old Town and other makers.
From Chapter 6: Synthetic Canoes
Canoes, as popular as they were, became symbols for benefits like quiet, smooth rides—on calm days, of course.
From Chapter 6: Synthetic Canoes
The Linkcanoe was another attempt at perfecting what was already a pretty perfectly designed boat, in the 1940s.
From Chapter 6: Synthetic Canoes
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.
From Chapter 6: Synthetic Canoes
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.