Native Americans of many different tribes who used canoes for transportation, needed to "canoe camp" regularly. Before the construction of modern means of transportation and transportation routes, the most effective way to travel through the vast expanses of northern wilderness was to navigate the countless small waterways by canoe. Their canoe was perfect for this purpose, as it was relatively easy to carry, fast, able to traverse a wide variety of different water ways (small streams to huge lakes), and able to carry large loads. It was for all these reasons that the early
French explorers of
North America, such as
Louis Jolliet, quickly adopted the use of the Native American canoe. With them came
Jesuit missionaries,
coureurs des bois, and
voyageurs. Once
trading posts were established in the interior, the canoe continued to be the primary transportation method, supplying such posts with regular
canoe brigades. In
northern Quebec, this practice continued until the middle of the 20th century. As the "
wilderness" of the Americas was tamed by the construction of the
railroad and later roads, the canoe as a means of primary transportation lost its practicality. It turned into a
recreational sport, a way for Americans and others to experience the pre-European America, and have a glimpse of a formerly never-ending wilderness. While recreational canoe camping has been enjoyed since the late 19th century by sporting and boating enthusiasts, it was not until later in the 20th century that, with the advent of camping consumer goods, it gained mass appeal.
Notable proponents and expeditions An early proponent and popularizer of canoe camping was
George W. Sears, a sportswriter for
Forest and Stream magazine in the 1880s, whose book
Woodcraft (1884), told the story of his 1883, journey through the central
Adirondacks in a , solo canoe named the
Sairy Gamp. He was 64 years old and in frail health at the time.
John MacGregor during the 1860s built and sailed and paddled his "Rob Roy" canoes through Europe, and the Middle East documenting these in a series of books including;; (1886) A Thousand Miles in the Rob Roy Canoe; (1867) The Voyage Alone In The Yawl 'Rob Roy'; (1867) The Rob Roy on the Baltic; and (1869) The Rob Roy on the Jordan, Nile, Red sea. Inspired by MacGregor, and using a version of his "Rob Roy" canoe
Robert Louis Stevenson undertook, in 1876, a canoe journey through the waterways of France and Belgium and wrote this up in his
An Inland Voyage. Also in 1883,
American Canoe Association Secretary
Charles Neide and retired sea captain "Barnacle" Kendall paddled and sailed over in a
sailing canoe from
Lake George, New York to
Pensacola, Florida. The adventure
memoir Canoeing with the Cree relates
Eric Sevareid's youthful journey with a companion from
Minnesota to
Hudson Bay in 1930. In Canada,
Bill Mason, who was an author, artist, filmmaker, and environmentalist, published several books and produced a number of films in the 1970s that greatly advanced the popularity of canoe camping.
Calvin Rutstrum was a wilderness canoeist and author, whom Bill Mason said "totally influenced me" and "he became my hero". Like Mason and Sevareid, a number of modern-day canoeists have retraced the historic routes of the fur-traders and voyageurs and published books about their experiences. Noteworthy examples from Canada include
Coke Stop in Emo: Adventures of a Long-Distance Paddler by Alec Ross,
Canoeing a Continent: On the Trail of Alexander MacKenzie by Max Finkelstein and
Where Rivers Run by
Joanie and Gary McGuffin.
Sigurd Olson,
conservationist and north woods writer, traveled and camped by canoe extensively. These included long trips as he wrote about in his book
The Lonely Land and well as frequent shorter trips covered in many of his books.
Eric W. Morse, author, historian and notable wilderness canoe tripper traveled with Sigurd Olson. He authored books on their wilderness trips and on
historical fur trade canoe routes in Canada. In the "
Source to Sea expedition" of 2005, two students from
North Carolina State University paddled down the
Mississippi and
Atchafalaya Rivers to support the
Audubon Society's Upper Mississippi River Campaign. The book
New York to Nome by Rick Steber details the story of Sheldon Taylor and Geoffrey Pope who paddled from
New York City April 25, 1936, to
Nome, Alaska, August 11, 1937. And from January 10, 1975 until November 12, 1977, Jerry Robert Pushcar canoed and portaged solo a distance of from
New Orleans, Louisiana, to Nome, Alaska, via the Mississippi, Prescott, Minnesota, Grand Portage, Lake Superior, and Canada. This was the longest recorded canoe trip in history until 1980. The record was broken by
Don Starkell and his sons Dana and Jeff, who paddled in an open canoe from
Winnipeg in central Canada to
Belém at the mouth of the
Amazon River from June 1, 1980 to May 1, 1982, covering a distance of .
Henry David Thoreau, an American author and advocate of
environmental conservation, provided a written account of a long distance canoeing expedition in his book
The Maine Woods. Thoreau's canoeing expedition in
Maine covered remote areas that can still be experienced in Maine's
Hundred Mile Wilderness. ==References==