Historic Boat Maker's Signs
These two signs once marked a canoe and boat building establishment that was active in Maine during the 1940s. Solon is a town in central Maine through which the Kennebec River flows. The Arnold Trail Boats and Canoes company appears in a list of Maine canoe builders from the 1870's to the present that was compiled by the Penobscot Marine Museum for their 2001 exhibit "Bark to Canvas: The Evolution of a Maine Canoe." So far, all that we have been able to find out about this company is its location, the era of its existence, and that its owner built canoes.
The larger sign (80.5" wide x 2" deep x 32.5" high) is single-sided, so most likely hung on the front exterior of the shop.
It is painted on a clear-finish birch veneer surface and has a molded frame.
The hand-painted lettering is red with gold outlining.
The smaller (34" wide x .75" deep x 11" high), solid wood sign is double-sided, so it either hung on a post at the roadside or perpendicular to the building at its doorway.
The background is painted gold, and the chamfered edge and lettering are navy blue.
In both signs, the name Arnold Trail is done in the same script lettering.
These signs evoke the history of two distinct time periods. First, they are artifacts of an earlier period of commercial canoe building in Maine which began in the late 1880s. Most likely the canoes made at the Arnold Trail Boats & Canoes shop were crafted of wood and canvas in a traditional Maine design. A classic Maine trip canoe, such as the one made by the E. M. White company pictured below, is characterized by its wide, shallow hull making a stable and large capacity interior suitable for holding packs and paddlers on long canoe trips.
E. M. White canoe, circa 1920 (Bert Lincoln Call photo)
But these two trade signs also evoke a much earlier history, dating back to the establishment of our nation during the Revolutionary War in the 1770s. By naming his business Arnold Trail, the owner was honoring the history-laden location of his shop along the Kennebec River. In the autumn of 1775 Benedict Arnold led 1,100 Colonial men on an expedition up the Kennebec and Dead Rivers in Maine to mount an attack on the British stronghold of Quebec City. (A good historical novel about this expedition is Arundel by Kenneth Roberts.)
Arnold was a brave and intelligent military leader during his years in the Continental Army, but he ultimately defected to the British Army in September 1780
On October 7, 1775 Arnold and his army camped just below the unnavigable 20’ drop of Caratunk Falls, about a mile above the present-day village of Solon, prior to carrying their boats around the falls the following day.
By naming his boat shop after the Arnold expedition, the owner was perhaps inadvertently referencing not only its Kennebec River location, but also the auspicious role that boat building played in Arnold's Continental Army battalion's infamous journey to Quebec. When Arnold and other colonists convinced General George Washington that approaching Quebec via the Maine wilderness was a good strategy for attack, Washington commissioned Reuben Colburn to build 200 bateaux for the expedition.
The original order to build 200 bateaux written by George Washington to Reuben Colburn is in the Library of Congress.
Colburn was a good choice for the task since ten years prior to the Quebec expedition he had built a house, saw mill, brickyard, boat yard, and gristmill along a region of the Kennebec River close enough to its mouth to be accessible by sailing ships. But when rallied to action by Washington, Colburn and his men had to build the bateaux in just two weeks using green wood and insufficient nails, to be ready for the 1,100 men who disembarked from ten ships at Colburn's home on Sept. 22, 1775.
The Reuben Colburn House, Pittston, Maine.
Despite the noble efforts of Colburn and twenty of his craftsmen who accompanied the expedition to serve as boat repairers, the "villainous" construction of the bateaux ultimately played a huge role in the failure of the expedition. The unseasoned wood did not hold up in the water, so the boats leaked, soaking not only the troops' clothing, but also ruining their meager food supplies. By the time the men arrived in Quebec they were near starvation, many were sick with dysentery, and all were exhausted from the arduous upriver paddling and overland portaging of water-logged bateaux in cold and rainy autumn weather.
Illustration of Arnold's men in bateaux by Sydney Adamson from The Century Magazine (1903).
If properly constructed, bateaux would have been ideal for transporting men and supplies upriver in swift waters (although perhaps not so ideal for overland portaging). They are shallow-draft, flat-bottomed, flared-side, pointed-end boats that were used extensively in Colonial America and in the fur trade, but also for the next two centuries in Maine during log drives to enable men to approach and clear log jams.
A bateau being used in an early 20th century Maine log drive (Bangor Daily News)
During the expedition Arnold himself purportedly paddled a birch bark canoe, and then when it began to leak switched to a dugout canoe, so that he could quickly maneuver among his men. But what if the expedition members had paddled strong, light, agile and easily-repaired wood and canvas canoes, such as those likely made 170 years later at Arnold Trail Boats and Canoes? Unfortunately, wood and canvas canoes were not invented until the last decades of the 1800's when enterprising boat builders adapted the design of Native American bark-clad boats. We can only assume that the 1940's boat builders at Arnold Trail had sufficient skill so that if they were called into wartime service as Reuben Colburn was, their canoes would have held up to their task.
Vintage trade signs such as these are a popular genre of collectible folk art not only because of their graphic appeal, but also because they are cultural artifacts that evoke past enterprises and ways of life. While boat building of all kinds is still a thriving business in Maine, these signs leave us to imagine the specific life and times of one particular boat builder who plied his trade on the banks of the historic Kennebec River.
