The Old Town Canoe Company couldn’t have started in a better place when it built its first canoe more than a hundred years ago. Old Town, Maine, is a small city located on the fringe of the Great North Woods and next to the Penobscot Indian Island Reservation. The Penobscot River runs right through Old Town.

The Penobscot people had been making birch bark canoes for hundreds of years. They provided the inspiration – and many employees – for the Old Town Canoe Company’s original wood-and-canvas canoes. For centuries, natives and non-natives in Northern Maine had used canoes as workboats. But then canoes evolved into the recreational craft — a wildly popular recreational craft. Decades later the canoe-like kayak became all the rage. The Old Town Canoe Company has ridden those waves ever since 1898. Today it makes more kayaks than canoes. But it has, remarkably, survived as an American company that still makes something.

The first canoe built by Old Town Canoe was constructed in 1898 behind the Gray hardware store in Old Town, Maine. Unlike the pioneering canoe businesses established by E.H. Garrish, B.N. Morris, and E.M. White, the Grays were not canoe builders themselves but were entrepreneurs who hired others to design and build their canoes. The Old Town factory on Middle Street was purchased on October 23, 1901, by brothers Herbert and George Gray along with George Richardson. It was run as a family business until 1974.

In 1917 they introduced the motorized canoe with a square stern to which an outboard motor could be attached. In 1940, Old Town Canoe made its first kayak – a wood-and-canvas model. It was then the biggest canoe maker in the world. By the mid-1940s, the company ran five logging operations to get enough wood to meet demand.

But after the war, Old Town Canoe faced increasing competition from aluminum and fiberglass canoes. The Grays’ descendants, who still owned the company, thought aluminum kayaks were ugly and refused to make them. And Deane Gray, George’s grandson, had a sign on his desk that said, ““If God wanted fiberglass boats, he would have made fiberglass trees!”

After  1965, Old Town had finally begun experimenting with new materials, and in 1965 it built its first fiberglass canoe. Other innovations – especially the Discovery canoe – allowed it to return to profitability and regain its title as the world’s largest canoe maker.

Old Town’s trademark wood and canvas canoes have never gone out of production, although they are no longer built at Old Town Canoe. With the closing of the factory at Old Town, Maine, the company contracted with Island Falls Canoe, owned by Jerry Stelmok of Atkinson, to build and maintain its wooden canoes.

Most of the individual records for Old Town’s canoes and boats built prior to 1976 still exist. Information on serial numbers 210,999 or less has been scanned and can be accessed by providing the number either to Wooden Canoe Heritage Association volunteers online or by contacting the Old Town company. A serial number is located on the upper face of the stem on the floor of the canoe at each end. Build records contain specific information regarding the construction of each boat or canoe, including the dates each part of the build process was accomplished, the date it was shipped, and its final destination.

According to en.Wikipedia; newenglandhistoricalsociety.com