J. H. Rushton’s “Saranac Laker” or “Adirondack or Saranac Lake Boat”, as seen in Rushton’s Rowboats and Canoes, The 1903 Catalog in Perspective, published by the Adirondack Museum and International Marine Publishing, is one of the most-desired of guideboats, both by amateurs and by connoisseurs.
Rushton’s shop in Canton, New York, built guideboats from 1888 to 1916, and his design went through three phases. This boat derives from the second period, 1891-92, when he hired a second Saranac Lake builder, Alric Moody, to oversee guideboat construction, a method very different from what Rushton’s craftsmen were used to.
Few of Rushton’s earliest guideboats are known today. They had plank seats and square gunwales. They also had typical guideboat decks, let into the gunwales, with pie-slice covering boards, as does this boat. This boat’s caned bow and stern seats, and presumed caned seat-backs, mark it as being of the second period.
The far more common boats of the third period, 1893 and later, have strip decks like those of Rushton’s Pleasure rowboats and rounded, or D-shaped, outwales.*
So this is a very rare Rushton guideboat. It came down in a family that owned an extremely rustic camp, reached by water only, on South Pond, a particularly beautiful pond near the southern end of Long Lake. It was restored 20 years ago by Long Lake boatbuilder Mason Smith, father of Reuben Smith of Tumblehome Boatshop. Now it is for sale by the original owner’s family.
Rushton’s boats in general are highly valued as antiques and as working boats. This boat is missing its original caned seat-backs, single-blade paddle, and yoke. (These accessories can be reproduced.) The price of $13,800 takes that into account as well as some non-original wood in its fabric. At 118 years of age it still calls for vigorous use and is decorative beyond words.