Northwoods Canoe Webcam – Watch Maine Canoes Take Shape

The Northwoods Canoe Webcam points across the shop floor at Northwoods Canoe Co. in Atkinson, Maine, where wood and canvas canoes are built and restored by hand. A cedar hull usually sits on sawhorses in the middle of the frame, planked and waiting for its next step, with a second boat off to one side. Racks of hand tools line the far wall, cans of paint and varnish crowd the shelves, and a woodstove stands against the left wall for the cold months. The room changes slowly. A hull that has held the same spot for days will suddenly be gone, replaced by a bare set of ribs, which is the clearest sign of how long this kind of work takes.

About Northwoods Canoe Co.

The shop sits at 336 Range Road in Atkinson, a Piscataquis County town of 326 residents at the 2010 census. Atkinson was incorporated on February 12, 1819, and covers 100.47 square kilometers (38.79 square miles) of woods, farm lots and back roads in central Maine. It is a small place to find one of the better known wooden canoe shops in the country, let alone two of them.

In 1975 Rollin Thurlow and Jerry Stelmok, both fresh out of boatbuilding school, bought the small Island Falls Canoe company from Clint Tuttle in Lubec, on the Down East coast. After a couple of years they moved the business inland to Atkinson. The partnership later divided, and each man kept a shop in the same town, so this one village holds two working builders of traditional wood and canvas canoes. Thurlow runs Northwoods, which is the shop the camera looks into.

Thurlow’s own design is the Atkinson Traveler, named for the town. Alongside it the shop builds reproductions of classic Morris and Rushton canoes, restores old wood and canvas hulls that arrive in poor shape, and sells plans, kits, paddle kits and building materials to people working at home. Thurlow and Stelmok also co-wrote The Wood and Canvas Canoe, the first book to set out in detail how these boats are actually put together, and it is still treated as the standard reference. Northwoods runs canoe building classes as well, so the people crossing the frame are not always staff.

Weather and Climate in Atkinson

Central Maine winters are long and cold. At Dover-Foxcroft, the nearest town with published records, January averages a high near minus 3 C (26 F) and a low around minus 16 C (3 F), with roughly 196 centimeters (77 inches) of snow over the season. Daylight is short, so the shop lights typically carry the picture for most of the working day and the windows along the right of the frame read as flat grey. The woodstove earns its place from November onward. Spring arrives late and wet, and the dirt roads around town soften through mud season before they firm up again.

Summer is mild rather than hot. July averages a high close to 27 C (80 F) and a low near 13 C (55 F), and on a clear day the windows behind the workbenches go bright green with the trees outside. That is also the season when finished hulls tend to leave the shop, since the lakes north of here are open and warm enough to use. Fall brings hard color to the hardwoods and a steady flow of canoes coming back in for winter repair work, which is why the floor can look fuller in October than it did in July.

Things to Do Near Atkinson

Peaks-Kenny State Park is the obvious stop, and it sits on Sebec Lake in the neighboring towns of Dover-Foxcroft and Bowerbank. The park covers about 340 hectares (839 acres) and carries roughly 16 kilometers (10 miles) of gentle hiking trails through old hardwood, hemlock and pine. There is a sandy swimming beach with a lifeguard on duty in summer, 56 campsites set among glacial boulders, and canoes available to rent on site. Sebec Lake itself is deep and cold enough to hold landlocked salmon and lake trout, which anglers here call togue.

From the park beach the view crosses the water to Borestone Mountain, a nature sanctuary of about 647 hectares (1,600 acres) with a trail to the summit. Dover-Foxcroft, population 4,422 at the 2020 census, is the nearest service town and sits on the Piscataquis River. Beyond that the country opens up quickly: Moosehead Lake, the Appalachian Trail and the southern end of Baxter State Park are all within a morning’s drive of Atkinson.

Similar Webcams You Might Like

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Frequently Asked Questions

Where is the Northwoods Canoe Webcam located?

Inside the Northwoods Canoe Co. shop at 336 Range Road in Atkinson, Piscataquis County, Maine. Atkinson is in the central part of the state, a short drive east of Dover-Foxcroft and well inland from the coast.

What can you see on the Northwoods Canoe Webcam?

The main shop floor. A canoe hull on sawhorses usually holds the center of the frame, with workbenches, tool racks, a woodstove and shelves of paint and varnish around the edges of the room. Work on a single boat plays out over days rather than minutes.

What is a wood and canvas canoe?

A canoe built as a cedar hull over bent ribs, then covered in canvas that is filled and painted to make it watertight. It is the traditional North American construction that preceded aluminum and fiberglass, and it is still built by hand in shops like this one.

Who runs Northwoods Canoe Co.?

Rollin Thurlow, who has been building and restoring canoes in Maine since the mid 1970s and who co-wrote the standard book on wood and canvas canoe construction.

What is the Atkinson Traveler canoe?

It is Thurlow’s own design, named after the town where the shop stands. The shop also builds reproductions of older Morris and Rushton canoes and sells plans and kits for home builders.

Does Northwoods Canoe Co. teach canoe building?

Yes. The shop runs wood canoe building classes and sells plans, kits, paddle kits, books and materials, so some of the work visible on the floor is being done by students rather than by staff.

What is the weather like in Atkinson, Maine?

Cold and snowy in winter, with January lows near minus 16 C (3 F) and about 196 centimeters (77 inches) of snow in a season, and mild in summer, with July highs around 27 C (80 F). The camera is indoors, so the weather shows up mainly through the shop windows.

Why is nobody working in the shop right now?

This is a working business, not a display. The floor is busiest during the working day and goes quiet in the evenings, at weekends and while the crew is elsewhere in the building, but the boats stay in frame and the camera keeps running.

Source: Northwoods Canoe Co.