Old Town Canoe Research

[Adam Sullivan]

Hey everybody, my wife and I bought a house in upstate NY a couple of years ago and hidden in the back of the barn was an old wooden canoe. I finally have some time to play around with it and was hoping to find out a little more information about. The serial numbers appear to read: 63093. I'm super excited about this project and am looking forward to learning more about it. Thanks for any help you can provide!

 

[Benson Gray]

Welcome, the Old Town canoe with serial number 63093 is an 18 foot long, CS (common sense or middle) grade, Otca model with red western cedar planking, open spruce gunwales, twenty inch birch decks, birch thwarts, birch seats, and a keel. It was built between October, 1920 and July, 1921. The original exterior paint color was dark green. It shipped on June 10th, 1922 to New York City. A scan of this build record can be found by following the link at the attached thumbnail image below.



This scan and several hundred thousand others were created with substantial grants from the Wooden Canoe Heritage Association (WCHA) and others. A description of the project to preserve these records is available at http://www.wcha.org/catalogs/old-town/records/ if you want more details. I hope that you will join or renew your membership to the WCHA so that services like this can continue. See http://www.wcha.org/about-wcha to learn more about the WCHA and http://www.wcha.org/store/membership to join.

It is possible that you could have another number or manufacturer if this description doesn't match your canoe. Feel free to reply here if you have any other questions. Good luck with the restoration,

Benson