Behind the Brand: The History of Old Town Canoes and Kayaks

Anyone who knows anything about boats—specifically canoes or kayaks—knows the name Old Town. The watercraft brand has been around since the 1800s, when it first started churning out traditional wood canoes in a Maine town on the banks of the Penobscot River. Since then, it has grown into one of the most popular companies in the world of canoes and kayaks, especially fishing kayaks.

We had the chance to spend a few days up in Maine to try out the latest Old Town ePDL+ kayak. Not only did we enjoy hours on the water and land a few decent smallmouths, we also got to chat with marketing director and brand evangelist Ryan Lilly. He knows a heck of a lot about fishing and even more about Old Town. In this interview, he walked us through what he calls the “epic journey” of Old Town—a.k.a. how it started, and how it became what it is today.

Field & Stream: Take us all the way back to the beginning. How did Old Town even begin?

Ryan Lilly: Old Town started back in 1898. Maine’s history is really centered around the timber industry, both logging and paper and wood products. In the 1800s, we were on Marsh Island, which is an island that’s carved out by the Penobscot River to the east and the Stillwater River which peels off of the Penobscot to form the western border. We’re situated on a very large river that connects Northern Maine with the ocean, a river that was lined with a lot of mills.

Historically, it’s been a strategic place for commerce, for moving timber from the forest to the mills to the ocean to be shipped out. It was a bustling community back in the 1800s centered around the timber industry. The Gray family owned a hardware store in downtown Old Town.

At the time, people were cutting trees down in Northern Maine and then log drivers would actually float the logs down the river. They would walk across from log to log and keep them flowing with the current. They even had special tools to help them pry the logs off of rocks or stumps. But in the wintertime, everything freezes up. So those log drivers had to do something else. A lot of them were boat builders or snowshoe makers who would trap or hunt in the winter. The Gray family saw an opportunity to employ some of these wintering log workers to make canoes.

What were those first canoes like?

The birch bark canoe and batteau (which is like a flat-bottom, wooden jon boat) were really the way people got around for both pleasure and for work when they weren’t riding a horse. The Gray family decided to start with the birch bark canoe concept, but innovate in a way that made it a lot easier to manufacture and take care of. A birch bark canoe is a wonderful thing to paddle, but it’s a terrible thing to maintain. It’s really hard to keep those things going.

The indigenous peoples of the area, the Penobscots, had really perfected the art of making birch bark canoes. They’d been doing it for hundreds and hundreds of years. Making a birch bark canoe is about a 500-hour process. It takes a lot of labor and a lot of bark in order to do it. And then you’re constantly patching holes and maintaining it over its life cycle.

So the Grays created a wood and canvas structured canoe that would be quicker to build and way easier to maintain. They hired a few log drivers who had boat building expertise and they created the Old Town Canoe Company out of the backside of their hardware store in downtown Old Town.

What do you think led to the success of that burgeoning boat business?

It was so serendipitous. First, people were using boats to get around, they needed them. Here in Maine, everybody’s got a boat or a canoe or a kayak. It’s just still kind of a way of life up here. And secondly, post-war, all the troops who were coming home really invested a lot in recreation and spending time with family and friends. A lot of veterans who wanted to recreate and hunt and fish in the Maine woods really propelled the canoe movement. And third, down in Boston, canoes were having a moment on the Charles River. A lot of the teenagers were using canoeing as a way to unleash some of their freedom and, and hang out with members of the opposite sex. It was kind of a big thing back then.

So you started with birch bark. How did you evolve from wood to other materials for your canoes?

We were shipping a lot of boats to Boston, a lot of folks were buying them in Maine, and then we started shipping them to places like Disney. We started to grow substantially following World War One and then again following World War Two, We were manufacturing a lot of boats and our product line changed from just wood canvas canoes to dinghies, sailboats, and actual motor boats—both pleasure crafts and commercial boats.

Then around the mid century, we started playing around with other materials aside from wood and canvas. That’s when we started introducing things like fiberglass and plastics. And we started to refine our product offering to just canoes and kayaks. And then in the mid seventies, the Johnson family purchased Old Town and we became a part of the Johnson Outdoors Company.

What was (or is) your most popular canoe design?

So at the time, we were manufacturing rotomolded canoes canoes built using Royal X which is a material that’s not available anymore. But it was a super lightweight ABS constructed canoe. We basically took a sheet of really lightweight plastic (that was comprised of three layers of plastic sandwiched together) and then melted it down and formed it around a frame or a mold.

Then in 1985, our head engineer at the time, Lou Gilman, created the rotomolded canoe line that still exists today called the Discovery line. We named it that because it happened at the same time as the Discovery rocket launch. It’s still our most popular canoe. Basically, it’s three layers of rotomolded polyethylene or HDPE plastic that’s put through a process that we created that we later innovated. And it’s still a process that we use today for the Discoveries, the Penobscots, and a few of our kayaks.

Speaking of kayaks, when did you expand from just canoes to canoes and kayaks?

We acquired a company called Necky and a company called Ocean Kayak in the nineties. Ocean Kayak and its founder Tim Niemier really revolutionized the sit-on-top kayak—the whole design concept was basically a surfboard you could sit on. What was amazing about that innovation specifically is that it self drains and is much easier to get on top. Contrarily, if you’re sitting inside of a kayak and flip it over, you have to go through the laborious painstaking process of emptying that boat out and re-entering that boat if you’re in deep water or just getting it to shore to empty it out.

So the sit-on-top kayak was a game-changer. And it really was the beginning of where we are today as a company. Most of our product—aside from canoes and some of our recreational kayaks—are sit-on-top designs.

Talk to us about Old Town fishing kayaks. When did that start, and what were those first crafts like?

Back in 2013, we launched the Predator line, which was our first fishing kayak line. And the first model was the Predator 13, which was a 13-foot sit-on-top paddle kayak with rod, rod holders, accessory track plates, and a framed seat. That was kind of our entry point into the sit-on-top fishing kayak game.

Next, we launched the Predator MK, which was a motorized fishing kayak that was really ahead of its time. That was before anybody even thought to motorize a kayak. And then in 2016, we released our Predator PDL, which was our first pedal-driven kayak. All three of those boats won awards at ICAST for being very innovative platforms for angling. So in 2020 we had the Predator line, which is kind of our premium fishing kayak line, and we had our Topwater line, which was a new design that was a bit more price sensitive.

How did the Sportsman kayaks come to be?

We saw an opportunity to bring both the best of the best of the Predator and the best of the best of the Topwater and create a new line of kayaks that was much easier and more approachable for consumers to shop and understand which model was right for them. It also housed our newest innovations: our new autopilot feature and our new Minn Kota products. So we recast our entire fishing line in 2020, and called it the Sportsman line.

What are you most excited about with the Old Town Sportsman fishing kayaks?

The Sportsman line features paddle, pedal, and motorized kayaks. And it also features what was at the time our brand new autopilot, which has a built-in Minn Kota trolling motor with GPS Spot-Lock. And that also won an award at ICAST that year. Then, just this last summer, we launched an ePDL version in the Sportsman called the ePDL+ 132. So now you can paddle, you can pedal, you can have a fully motorized experience, or you can have a hybrid experience. The ePDL truly gives you the best of both worlds: a motorized kayak that’s also a pedal kayak. And that’s where we are today.

Is there anything that has stayed the same since day one?

What ties us to the beginning—aside from our canoe designs, which have remained unchanged for many, many years—is that we still manufacture our boats largely by hand here in Maine. During the rotomolding process, of course, you pour resin powder in a mold and it melts in an oven. But the actual manufacturing process is still very hands-on, and there’s still craftsmanship in all of our boats. Some of it’s automated, but not all of it. A lot of it is still done by hand.

What would you say Old Town’s mission is?

To sum it up, our mission is to inspire people to get outside and to experience the awe in the great outdoors—to connect with nature and to connect with each other.

What’s your favorite part about being a part of Old Town?

Selfishly, I get to do what I love. I am an angler and a hunter, and so I get to use our crafts on the weekend to do what I do. It’s really hard to separate work from pleasure because I get to recreate in the products that we make. I’m very much connected to our manufacturing and what we are selling because it’s something that I use personally on a daily basis.

The one red thread from 1898 to today is that innovation has always driven us as a company. We saw a better way to create a canoe back in the late 1800s that would change the way people approach building watercraft. We took a design that the Penobscot Nation had used for hundreds and hundreds of years and made it a lot more accessible for the everyday person.

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