Canoe Club Marks 50th Anniversary

THE Ledyard Canoe Club celebrated its 50th anniversary on April 30, but its namesake dates from the founding of the College 200 years ago.

The club is named after John Ledyard of Groton, Conn., who was perhaps the original student dropout. He entered Dartmouth in 1772 but stayed only one year. His mother hoped he would become a missionary, but young Ledyard's interests lay elsewhere, and he spent much of his time wandering among the Indian tribes along the Canadian border.

In the spring of 1773 with the help of some fellow students who were Indians, Ledyard fashioned a dugout canoe from a large pine tree on the Hanover bank of the Connecticut River and set out on a trip down the river to Hartford, Conn. In ending his education at Dartmouth: he began his life as a world traveler.

Ledyard's trip gave birth, 147 years later, to the club which bears his name and the annual Cruise-to-the-Sea, a 220-mile canoe trip from Hanover to Saybrook, Conn. The club had its beginning in December 1919 when three students, armed with pledges of $1600 and the support and encouragement of the Rev. John E. Johnson, Class of 1866, purchased six Old Town canoes and organized a group named after Ledyard. Soon the club grew to 25 undergraduates and four faculty members.

Today, although the Cruise-to-the-Sea canoe trip remains the major adventure of the year, the Ledyard Canoe Club has also become a recognized leader in the highly competitive, but sometimes dangerous, sport of white-water kayaking. Several national champions have been produced by the club since the sport was first introduced in 1962. A year later, the first indoor kayak competition ever held in the western hemisphere was staged in Dartmouth's Olympic-sized swimming pool and has since become an annual contest.

The 1960's were also a period of international canoeing for the Ledyard Club, beginning in 1964 when nine students paddled the Danube River from Ulm, Germany, to the Black Sea. This distance of 1685 miles was covered in 73 days, and the canoeists passed through eight nations, most of them behind the Iron Curtain. The following year three students from Iron Curtain countries joined Dartmouth students for a canoe trip from Burlington, Vt., to New York City by Lake Champlain and the Hudson River. In 1966 with a thirst for more international excitement, four Dartmouth men, four British students, and a graduate student from UCLA paddled kayaks 1100 miles in 72 days up the eastern coast of Japan.

No matter how far afield the members of the Canoe Club may journey at times, each spring they renew their historic ties to John Ledyard by re-enacting his trip down the Connecticut.

This year the Cruise-to-the-Sea, which took place May 11-16, had a timely new twist. During the trip water samples of the Connecticut River were taken by Peter Webster '71, president of the club. He plans to analyze them in a chemistry course he is taking. His most vivid memory of his previous cruise as a freshman was the extraordinary amount of pollution in the river. "It is a real shame to see a beautiful river being destroyed," he said.