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The Conservationist |
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Boats And Boating
In The Adirondacks - 100 Years Ago |
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by Hallie E. Bond |
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When the Blue Line was drawn around the Adirondack Park this region was the
richest area in the country for a variety of inland small boats. As the
guidebook writer, E.R. Wallace wrote at the time, "in this Venice of
America" nearly all the traveling is done by means of boats…" Boats were
essential for business and pleasure. There were steamboats to take families
to their summer vacations at a mountain hotel, simple skiffs to put
fishermen over fish, freight boats to carry Saratoga trunks to great camps,
and sailing canoes to give thrilling rides in gusty mountain winds. Most of
these boats were imports; the most common boat in the new park was the
indigenous Adirondack guideboat.
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The guideboat has evolved in response to the needs of the early settlers. It
had been to the early farming settlers what the horse and cart was to
residents of regions with better roads. By 1892, however, the guideboat had
become the main piece of equipment necessary for cultivating a new and more
lucrative cash crop than oats or potatoes, the sportsman. It was light for
the many carries, but could handle a great load and was therefore admirably
suited to toting the guns, cast-iron frying pans and other heavy camping
gear, used in the days before lightweight aluminum and nylon. It was also
fast - ideal for getting the ‘sport’ his deer when hounding and jacking were
still legal.
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In 1892, Adirondack guideboats were more numerous than ever, but they were
used in new ways by new people. Instead of being rowed by native guide on
long sporting excursions, most were used for short picnic trips or for
transportation from one hotel to another. The rower was as likely to be a
city man as a rustic. |
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The guideboat had changed with the times, as well. The carrying yoke
continued to be standard equipment, but it was not used as much as formerly.
On some of the more popular carries local men could be hired to haul the
guideboat and gear across on a wagon. Paint schemes changed too; instead of
the blacks, dark greens and dark blues of the hunting and fishing boat,
varnished yacht finishes and patriotic colors adorned the sport’s boats. The
Grants of Boonville painted a boat orange and blue for a sport from the
University of Virginia and varnished boats from this era abound in the
Adirondack Museum collection. |
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Even thought the lightness and speed of the Adirondack guideboat were no
longer essential to an Adirondack vacation or the Adirondack life, the boat
had become a fixture of the Adirondack scene. The era of the creation of the
Adirondack Park was also the era of the creation of many private parks, from
the great preserves of the Adirondack League Club in the Southwest and the
Adirondack Mountain Reserve in the Northeast, the smaller clubs scattered
throughout the region. Many of these associations preserved not only land
and the ideal of an untouched wilderness but the guides and their boats as
well. In the late 1950’s, when the Adirondack Museum began studying
guideboats, it was on these private preserves that many were found. |
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In the summer the Adirondack Park was established, canoes, rowing craft and
steamboats sported alongside the native guideboats. Canoes are the small
craft most familiar in the region today; a century ago the very latest in
canoe technology and fashion was on exhibit at the annual congress of the
American Canoe Association, held at Willsboro Point on Lake Champlain. A
woman who attended wrote delightedly of the "fairy fleet, flying about us in
the wind with long swallow curves, or along the shore with stroke of paddle
darting in and out - brilliant-hued, amber, crimson, pale and dark green and
blue…" |
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The most impressive boats were the decked sailing canoes. They were European
versions of the Eskimo kayak in shape, with a sail or two added. Although
they had started out as popular cruising boats for inland water, by 1892
they were, as one builder put it, like race horses: good for racing and
little else. While they were never used much for cruising through the
Adirondacks because of the many carries and unpredictable winds, adventurous
owners of private camps kept them for exciting days sailing. An aptly-named
Vesper model (now in the collections of the Adirondack Museum) was used by
the Pruyns of Camp Santanoni on Newcomb Lake. |
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The paddling canoes which showed up at Willsboro Point included native
birchbarks, the latest from the great canoe shops of the Peterborough area
of Canada and the newest models of the many American builders. Chief among
these builders was J.H. Rushton of Canton, NY, who had learned canoeing and
canoe-building in the northern foothills of the Adirondacks. Rushton was at
the height of his fame in 1892, a position which owed much to his
association with George Washington Sears, known to readers of the sporting
periodical Forest and Stream, as Nessmuk.
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Rushton had built five canoes for Nessmuk, and they had become so famous
through Nessmuk’s writing that Rushton offered two of them as stock models.
They were small versions of the boats used in the northern Adirondacks in
Rushton’s childhood, eight and one half feet long and ten and one half feet
long, instead of the traditional fourteen feet, and paddled with a double
bladed paddle instead of a single blade. These small canoes, which have
become popular today as pack canoes, are probably as old as the guideboat in
the Adirondacks. In the early years they were eclipsed by the guideboat, but
by 1892, due in part to the writings of Nessmuk, solo cruising in little
canoes was becoming quite popular. Nessmuk encouraged this trend by pointing
out that with a knowledge of woodcraft (which one could gain from his book)
one could dispense with a human guide. By Nessmuk’s time the novice camper
was also aided by guidebooks and accurate maps.
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The little canoes which Nessmuk favored, and even the larger, more stable
two-person open canoes which builders in Maine were beginning to produce in
wood and canvas for the national market, were not for everyone. Children,
fishermen or couples who wanted to rent a boat at their hotel for a little
mandolin-playing in a secluded cove could choose from boats "less tottlish"
than the canoe or guideboat. Stability was becoming more and more important
to builders and livery operators faced with an unskilled public. J.H.
Rushton was once asked if one of his ten and one half foot Bucktail models
could "carry two good sized men and camp duffel and be steady enough to
stand up in and shoot out of." |
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"I told him," Rushton replied, "that I thought he’d shoot out of it mighty
quick if he tried it." |
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The St. Lawrence River Skiff was only one of the many types of boats popular
in the Adirondacks during this era which was originally designed for use
elsewhere. Large, stable and comfortable, it was ideal for people who wanted
to go fishing and picnicking and didn’t need to carry their boat. Builders
all over the Northeast had their versions of stable skiffs, many of which
found their way into the Adirondacks. Mahlon Freeman of Fulton built a
Fulton pleasure boat. The mainstay of the shop of his onetime boss J.H.
Rushton was a pleasure rowboat which was built in sizes up to 21 feet and
could be outfitted to sail.
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Adirondack boatbuilders met the need for stable rowboats with local
variations of boat types from elsewhere which became beloved parts of the
local scene. Chateaugay Lake has it Bellows boats (similar to the St.
Lawrence skiff), and Brant Lake its flat-iron-skiff-style Brant Lake fishing
boat.
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Builders on Lake George developed a boat for their waters which owes much to
the Whitehall, a transom-sterned rowboat used originally in New York harbor.
Hundreds of Lake George rowboats were built for use at the large hotels and
became an important part of the summer social scene. Young people would row
out onto the glassy lake on a calm evening and sing to the stars, or hire a
small steamer to tow a string of rowboats decorated with Japanese lanterns
and fairy lights past their elders gathered on the hotel veranda.
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Many of these Adirondack pleasure rowboats were built with guideboat
construction features because that was what their builders were most
familiar with. In the Northeast was the Westport guideboat, built with sawn
frames and flat bottom board but less sheer than a guideboat and not meant
to be carried. A similar boat was built for use on the Fulton Chain in the
Southwest, and John Buyce turned out lapstrake boats with sawn frames and
flat bottom boards which were used for livery boats and fishing craft in the
Speculator area. |
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There hadn’t always been such a variety of boats in use in the region
because there hadn’t always been such a variety of boaters. As one observer
put it, by 1892, "The Adirondack wilderness, formerly visited by a few
adventurous sportsman…has, within a few years, become one of the most
popular resorts for tourists…Sporting (by which he meant blood sports,) must
continue to afford less and less inducement to visit the wilderness and must
be superseded by new objects of interest - the climate, peculiar local
institutions, the boating, the rough and salutary exercises and exposure…"
The great change in the numbers and types of people who visited the
Adirondacks was due to an increase in general prosperity in the Northeast
after the Civil War, a desire to get away from the industrializing cities ,
and to great improvements in transportation. People could now get right into
the interior of the mountains by rail, and, once here, could travel through
the woods by steamboat. |
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In the early spring of 1878, William West Durant had launched the steamboat
Utowana on the waters of Blue Mountain Lake and began a new era in
the Adirondacks. The Adirondack guideboat, the traditional means of
transportation through the region, was nearly eclipsed as a means of
transportation; most people favored the cheaper and more comfortable steamer
for long-distance travel. The guides predictably rebelled against the threat
to their livelihood; at least two steamboats were scuttled in suspicious
circumstances in the 1890’s. The sinking of the Buttercup on Long
Lake and the Mattie on Lake Placid failed to stop the march of
progress; by the year the park was created there were steamboats on all
lakes of any size in the region.
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What really made the guideboat obsolete as a working boat and greatly
reduced the importance of other pleasure craft was, of course, the
automobile. Today a boat is no longer essential to an Adirondack vacation
the way it was 100 years ago. Few people go hunting in guideboats, or
singing in skiffs and there is no longer an operating steamboat in the
region, but canoes do remain popular for camping and cruising. Although the
average visitor can get an idea of the rich variety of wooden boats which
once existed here only through historic sources and museum exhibits like the
Adirondack Museum’s new installation, people who tour the region in a boat
are rewarded with a view of the Adirondacks more like that which was
enshrined in a park 100 years ago.
About the Author |