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At the turn of the century one facet of the canoe building industry grew into a leisure craft business. Many canoes were design for the booming new middle class market. The canoe became a craft for romances were people could get away from the chaperon's watchful eye.  One contemporary pundit, speculating as to why so many proposals took place in canoes, thought that a woman reclining in the bow of a canoe presented the image of maximum desirability.

One popular canoe of the 1920's bears witness to the extent the craft became refined in its romantic role. It contains a specially molded seat in the stern for the paddling swain, with a long deck in the bow partially enveloping a vertical throne in which the passenger sat facing the stern, while trailing one hand in the rippling water. Cabinets were built beneath the deck on either side of the foremost seat, one apparently intended for liquid refreshment, and the other equipped with a complicated sliding door that opened to reveal a built-in phonograph.

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Then, “When motorcars became more available in the early ’20s, courting in canoes sort of fell off. “Guys were getting into their Model Ts or Model As and going off with girls for a Sunday drive instead of canoeing.” And what went on in the backseats of those cars? Well, that’s a whole different story.