Canoes: A Natural History in North America

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.

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.