Archaeologists in Wisconsin Unearth an Ancient 'Parking Lot' With 16 Dugout Canoes--Including One That's 5,200 Years Old

[Judi Lynn]

The team has several theories about how Indigenous groups created and used the vessels, which were discovered during research over the past five years


Sarah Kuta - Daily Correspondent
November 28, 2025



Most of the canoes are still submerged in Lake Mendota, but archaeologists have recovered two of them. Tamara Thomsen


In 2021, archaeologists unearthed the remains of a 1,200-year-old dugout canoe from a lake in Madison, Wisconsin. A year later, they found a second canoe in the same lake—and this time, the vessel was 3,000 years old. Then they discovered more and more, eventually realizing that they had stumbled upon an entire canoe “parking lot,” writes Todd Richmond for the Associated Press.

In total, researchers have found 16 canoes in Lake Mendota, a 9,781-acre body of water in Madison. Based on the number of canoes and the location of the site, archaeologists suspect the vessels were intentionally stashed there so that anyone could use them for navigating the region’s waterways—sort of like a modern bike-share program.

“It’s a parking spot that’s been used for millennia, over and over,” Tamara Thomsen, a maritime archaeologist with the Wisconsin Historical Society, tells the AP.

For the past few years, Thomsen has been collaborating with the preservation officers with the Ho-Chunk Nation and the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, as well as Sissel Schroeder, an anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Products Laboratory. Together, they’re unraveling the mysteries of the Indigenous canoes, which are some of the oldest surviving specimens of their kind in eastern North America.

More:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/archaeologists-in-wisconsin-unearth-an-ancient-parking-lot-with-16-dugout-canoes-including-one-thats-5200-years-old-180987741/