January / February 2025

A Barn-Find Canoe

Restoring a 1929 Old Town OTCA—and its history

Greg Hatten

LURA LANDIS

The author paddles the Old Town canoe on the Platte River at Rochester Falls, Missouri, in October 2024, just after completing his restoration.

When the barn door swung open, I saw the vintage, dark-green canoe suspended upside down from the joists in block-and-tackle slings. The only thing missing was a blinding light and a church choir singing the “Hallelujah Chorus.” My visit to the barn in St. Joseph, Missouri, was intended to be a boatbuilder’s “house call,” in response to the request of a friend to have a look at an old wooden boat and render an opinion before a fast-approaching estate sale. This was easy—my opinion, upon first glance, was, “I must own this canoe.”

Alone in my truck on the drive to the barn, I had reminded myself (in case I had a Hallelujah moment) of all the reasons that I didn’t need another boat. On the drive away from the barn, I made a list of reasons to justify the acquisition of another boat I did not need and had no room to store. As usual, when it comes to wooden boats, “want” trumps “need” and “heart” rules over “head.”

It was a 16′ canoe built by one of the oldest manufacturers in the United States, Old Town Canoe Co., which was named for the town in Maine where it was founded. I could tell from the holes in the bottom, the cracked ribs, and the rotten leather straps in the paddlers’ seats that it hadn’t been used in many years. I could also tell that at one time it had been a showpiece, with red-tinted cedar strips, a white-oak stem, and mahogany gunwales, all of them weathered, worn, and slightly warped with age and neglect. What I could not tell, and no one in the family seemed to know, was how in the world a boat that was built in an East Coast boatshop 1,600 miles away ended up hanging from the joists of a barn in St. Joseph, my home town.

I bought the canoe, hauled it home, and launched a scavenger hunt to uncover its history and learn about the adventures this canoe had had along the way before being retired to the barn.

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