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REVIEW
PRODUCTS • BOOKS • VIDEOS • STUFF
The Adirondack
Guideboat:
Its Origins, Its Builders
and Their Boats
Reviewed by John Summers
The Adirondack Guideboat: Its Origins, Its Builders and
Their Boats, by Stephen B. Sulavik, with revisions and additions
by Edward Comstock, Jr., and Christopher H. Woodwardd
(2018). Bauhan Publishing, P.O. Box 117, Peterborough, NH
03458; 603–567–4430; www.bauhanpublishing.com. Softcover
, black-and-white and color photographs, black-and-white
illustrations, maps, charts, glossary, selected bibliography,
appendices, index, 383 pp, $40. ISBN 978–0–87233–260–7
“
One of the finest things that the skill of man
has ever produced under the inspiration of
the wilderness.” If you have never had the
good fortune to see an Adirondack guideboat in person
, this 1895 description might sound like hyperbole.
If, however, you have seen one up close, or, even better,
been able to take it out for a row, then you will know that
it is not [an exaggeration], and furthermore, the rest of
the quotation will also ring true: “It is a frail shell, so light
that a guide can carry it on his shoulders with ease, but
so dexterously fashioned that it rides the heaviest waves
like a duck, and slips through the water as if by magic.”
North America’s small-craft heritage is as rich and
varied as the waters, woods, and the users from which it
sprang. One of the pleasures of delving into its details
is savoring the unique regional types that have arisen
in response to circumstances. In the second half of the
19th century, rising middle class prosperity, concern
over the unhealthiness of crowded cities, and the rapid
spread of railways gave rise to the idea of “the vacation,”
as people had, for the first time, both a reason to take
one and the means to do so. As the railways invested in
destination hotels and marketing to draw passengers,
wilderness and the experience of it became widely
available commodities.
As with the Thousand Islands region of the St. Lawrence
River and the Rangeley Lakes area in Maine, the
opening up of New York’s Adirondacks to sportsmen in
the middle of the 19th century produced a distinctive
local boat. The Adirondacks, with their complex network
of rivers and lakes, some of which could be connected
by “carries” (as portages were known locally), led guides
to develop watercraft that were easily rowed for miles at
a time but could also be transported between bodies of
water on their shoulders. Early transom-sterned models
weighing in the neighborhood of 120 lbs gradually
evolved into a sharp-sterned type that weighed a mere
70 lbs, sometimes with planking as thin as 3⁄16".
These guideboats became regional icons, and travelers
and sportsmen often remarked on their speed,
grace, and refined construction. Hotels and great
camps maintained fleets of them, and many of the
guides developed into skilled boatbuilders who evolved
distinct local variations of the basic type. As with other
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• WoodenBoat 267
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