In August, 2024, my story: “The Lost History of the Paul Bunyan Canoe Derby,” will be the cover story in Minnesota History Magazine.

It’s about the 450-mile canoe race on the Mississippi River, from Bemidji to Minneapolis, which ran in the 1940s and 1950s. It was a thread I started pulling and couldn’t stop. I spent a ton of time digging through old newspaper accounts, and interviewed the two surviving competitors I could find, both in their 90s.

The result, I hope, will be a new look at the history of a canoe racing, canoe building and canoe culture in Minnesota and beyond, as well as a new appreciation for the influence of Ojibwe canoe builders from the Lake Winnibigoshish area on the canoes we still use, and race, today.

Print copies will be available at the Minnesota History Center store, and online here https://shop.mnhs.org/ . You’ll also get the magazine if you become a member of the Minnesota Historical Society. And the story will be online here: https://mnhs.gitlab.io/archive/minnesotahistory/

A more in-depth version be published next spring in my book, Pushing the River: An Epic Battle, a Lost History, a Near-Death and Other True Canoeing Stories.