Hi, need help tracking the history of my canoe. I have an what i think is an Old Town Canoe. The serial number is wore but after using play dough to make an imprint it looks like 100278. This canoe was originally used by the Milwaukee County Parks department for guest to use at Greenfield Park. I hope someone can provide the year it was built. Thank you for any help you can provide. Mike
Old Town Canoe serial # 100278
- Thread starter mike1712
- Start date
Welcome and congratulations, the Old Town canoe with serial number 100278 is an 18 foot long, CS (Common Sense or middle)grade, HW model with western red cedar planking, open spruce gunwales, birch decks, birch thwarts, birch seats, a keel, outside stems, a floor rack, and sponsons. It was built between December, 1928 and January, 1930. The original exterior paint color was dark green. It shipped on February 11th, 1930 to Poughkeepsie, New York. A scan showing this build record can be found below.
This scan and several hundred thousand more 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 donate, join or renew your membership to the WCHA so that services like this can continue. See https://www.woodencanoe.org/about to learn more about the WCHA and https://www.woodencanoe.org/shop to donate or join.
It is also possible that you could have another number or manufacturer if this description doesn't match the canoe. Page seven of the 1930 catalog at https://www.woodencanoe.org/_files/ugd/537308_e6109d7cec504810bdd83abf02a3352e.pdf has more details. Feel free to reply here if you have any other questions.
Benson
This scan and several hundred thousand more 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 donate, join or renew your membership to the WCHA so that services like this can continue. See https://www.woodencanoe.org/about to learn more about the WCHA and https://www.woodencanoe.org/shop to donate or join.
It is also possible that you could have another number or manufacturer if this description doesn't match the canoe. Page seven of the 1930 catalog at https://www.woodencanoe.org/_files/ugd/537308_e6109d7cec504810bdd83abf02a3352e.pdf has more details. Feel free to reply here if you have any other questions.
Benson
Hi, thank you. The sold To name does not jive with what i was told about the canoe. The first three digits 100 are definitely correct but the last 3 digits are hard to read is there a way that I can find if a canoe or group of canoes were sold to Milwaukee County that have serial number that begin with 100---. Thanks Mike
Dave Osborn
LIFE MEMBER
Check the numbers on both stems, and post photos of them.
The short answer is no. The addresses on most build records before the mid-1930s were had written and I haven't found an optical character recognition program that can accurately read them. Pictures of the numbers from each end would help as Dave suggested. It would also be helpful to know the overall extreme length in a straight line. Thanks,
Benson
