Canoecopia started small, a modest event called "meet the folks who build the boats." The original owner of Rutabaga hoped to sell a half a dozen canoes at his sidewalk sale. He sold eleven canoes (this is long before kayaks were around) and was delighted. That was around 1976.

In 1981, the word "Canoecopia" was first used in a mailer from the old store in Park Street. The sport was growing and Rutabaga began to rent the Dane County Forum and Arena, where we would empty the store of merchandise and pile it high, deep, and cheap. The 20,000 square-foot Forum building was barely large enough to handle the crowd, and we had one area draped off for the speaker. One speaker. That continued for a while with overflow into the Arena for boats and such.

In the early 90s the Dane County Forum was bulldozed to make room for the new Dane County Expositional Hall. We added 30,000 feet to a total of 50,000 square feet and had about 70 exhibitors. We now had three speaker rooms, not one, and Canoecopia started to grow in popularity. Year by year we added rooms until we took the whole hall, all 100,000 square feet, plus all the speaker and meeting rooms. Now we have six speaker rooms and are spilling over into the hallways. When the Alliant Energy Center (its new name) adds room, we'll add room too.

From a dozen customers and a few trailers of boats to over 15,000 annual attendees and hundreds of exhibitors didn't happen overnight. The reason Canoecopia grew is because of people like you. Thanks for your past attendance, and thanks in advance to new attendees. See you at the show!