How much do you think Henry Richards paid for this canoe?
Henry Richards paid $30 for the canoe and two paddles! That is less than $1.70 a foot. Today, a master birchbark canoe builder might charge as much as $1,000 a foot to build a similar craft.
The Richards' Birchbark Canoe
• ca. 1876
• Birchbark & cedar with fabric patches
• Length: 18 feet 3 inches
• Width: 34.5 inches at the gunwales
A canoe with a wonderful history – this well-used Native America built boat remained in one New England family for over 130 years. Tudor and John Richards II, grandsons of the original purchaser, donated this canoe to the Abbe Museum in the summer of 2006.
In the 1870s, Henry Richards, a young architect from Gardiner, Maine, traveled by steamer to Bar Harbor to supervise the construction of a summer home for Mrs. Charles Dorr. On that same steamer, a yet-to-be-identified Indian was carrying a fleet of bark canoes that he would rent to Bar Harbor's burgeoning tourist population. Richards, fascinated with these canoes, purchased this canoe before disembarking the steamer!