BWPaddler: "Darn paywall... I assume they sank them to protect them from the fires? Hopefully deep enough where any disturbance created by a passing fire would not damage them..."
To save its storied wooden canoes, an Ely YMCA camp sank them in a lake
Dave Orrick
7–9 minutes
Nearly all of Camp Widjiwagan’s legendary fleet of wood canvas canoes is safe, with 19 of them cached underwater in an ancient practice.
The Minnesota Star Tribune
July 18, 2026 at 6:00AM
Wood-canvas canoes sit sunk under the water to protect them from possible wildfire damage at the YMCA’s Camp Widjiwagan, which was evacuated July 17 on Burntside Lake near Ely, Minn. Many of their boats were built by legendary Ely canoe builder Joe Seliga. (Anthony Souffle/The Minnesota Star Tribune)
The campers, of course, were the priority.
But the wooden canoes weren’t far behind.
As leaders of Camp Widjiwagan near Ely coordinated with rescue workers from two countries to ensure the safe evacuation of their campers Wednesday, another group scrambled to protect their storied fleet of “woodies,” historic handmade wood-and-canvas canoes.
With wildfires expanding in the general vicinity, some boats were evacuated to buildings in Ely, but a flotilla of 19 were weighed down with boulders and carefully submerged in the clear waters of Burntside Lake, entombed with the hopes they will float again when the flames subside.
“Our wooden canoes are one of the things that make Widji the way it is,” Ben Hoffman, executive director of the 97-year-old YMCA camp, said in an interview. “They’re handmade, and they embody a lot of what we try to teach.”
Blissful to paddle but bestial to portage, the wooden canoes — some a century old — are legendary at Widji, which sends sorties of youth into the canoe country wilderness on progressively longer trips as campers age, eventually venturing to the Arctic Circle.
To be clear, the North Arm of Burntside, home to Widji, YMCA Camp du Nord and dozens of cabins, had not been immediately threatened by fire as of Friday, although much of the nearby Echo Trail has been ordered to evacuate as fires in the vicinity spread.
But no one knew what was coming Wednesday, as authorities upped the camp’s evacuation status to “set,” which triggered the Y’s own policy of starting to evacuate the camp.
It also triggered the operation to cache the camp’s entire fleet of 205 canoes, which include more than 30 workhorse aluminum boats, some 20 ABS plastic canoes, around 10 modern lightweight Kevlar craft and upward of 110 wooden canoes.
Wood-canvas canoes sit sunk under the water to protect them from possible wildfire damage at the YMCA’s Camp Widjiwagan, which was evacuated as the Camp Fire burns approximately 8 miles north/northeast of the Cloquet Line, Friday, July 17, on Burntside Lake near Ely, Minn. Many of their boats were built by legendary Ely canoe builder Joe Seliga. (Anthony Souffle/The Minnesota Star Tribune)
‘It all comes down from lore’
The practice of sinking a boat to save it might be as old as the practice of carving dugout canoes from tree trunks in these lands.
The Wisconsin Historical Society has estimated that dugouts found submerged in Lake Mendota date back as far as 4,500 years. Archeologists believe ancient people understood that keeping a wooden vessel underwater could prevent it from cracking during the dry freezing cycles of winter.
Precisely who decided that Camp Widjiwagan needed to consider the method for approaching forest fires isn’t clear.
“It’s been talked about a lot over the years, from my understanding,” Tom Grant, who is employed as Widji’s “canoe master,” said Friday. “It all comes down from lore that this is what we will do.”
But no one had ever actually done it. In what he described as “hectic” fits and starts, he and others sought to figure out the most effective tactic. Once they did, they reorganized with a group of five or so counselors and returned to the task in what he described as “relaxed, more like a bath on Sunday.”
Each boat was turned on its side and allowed to fill with water in a waist-deep part of the lake where the bottom was free of rocks. Floating canoes served to ferry boulders to the scene. Each submerged canoe was weighed down with four boulders, two in the stern and two in the bow, to anchor the hulls to the bottom and prevent them from rocking under any wave turbulence.
The boats were loosely tied together, and the unmoving underwater armada was tied to shore. It took about a half the day.
As the evacuation effort ramped up, vehicles with trailers became available, and the bulk of the camp’s fleet was evacuated elsewhere, many into Ely to the home of Joe Smith, the camp’s retired longtime caretaker.
Three wooden canoes have fates unknown. They were part of groups of campers who had to be evacuated from the backcountry with urgency and were forced to leave much of their gear, including their canoes.
The 19 that were submerged in Burntside were those the most in need of repair, not seaworthy, with some requiring perhaps years of work.
Why bother?
Canoes sit sunk under the water at the YMCA’s Camp Widjiwagan, which was evacuated as the Camp Fire burns approximately 8 miles north/northeast of the Cloquet Line, Thursday, July 16, on Burntside Lake near Ely, Minn. (Anthony Souffle/The Minnesota Star Tribune)
‘Each canoe has a story’
Many of the canoes have historical value, as they were owned or made by Joe Seliga, a renowned canoe maker from Ely. In the early part of the last century, Seliga hand-sawed wooden frames and stretched canvas over them.
The graceful form, with recurved bow and stern and wide beam amidship to handle hefty cargo, won’t win races, but proved itself more than up to the task of backcountry tripping.
The YMCA and other camps Up North bought hundreds of the estimated 621 canoes he made, and Widji has the largest collection today.
“You must paddle one in the wilderness,” Hoffman implores anyone who questions their worth. “They are so quiet and soft in the waves.”
Campers are indoctrinated with the mythology of the wooden canoes early on. They are instructed that no wooden canoe’s canvas hull shall touch rock, or even sand — a commandment that tests campers’ mettle weeks into a trip as sore shoulders feel the weight of the woodies grow.
It’s not their imagination. The canoes slowly absorb water. A canoe that dried all winter might start the season at 80 to 85 pounds and end the season at 105 pounds — more than twice the weight of most Kevlar canoes being trotted across the Boundary Waters.
Each canoe is numbered. Ask a Widji alum which wooden canoe they took on a trip, and it’s likely they’ll tell you the number, along with its blemishes.
“Each canoe has a story,” Hoffman said. “We have log books of each of these canoes. We still have Canoe Number 2. Each individual camper and counselor is a part of the history of that boat. That’s part of this strategy.”
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