History of Yandt Boat Works

Ron Yandt's great-uncle, Bob Yandt, immigrated to the United States from Germany as a young boy in the early 1890s, settling with his family in Minnesota. Bob grew up with a natural talent for mechanics and a love for working with his hands. In his early twenties, Bob seized an opportunity to move westward to Northern Idaho, where he found work in the booming sawmills. He settled in Coeur d’Alene, taking a position as a millwright at the Potlatch Sawmill. Once established, Bob began using the leftover cedar scraps from the mill to build small rowboats. His creations quickly caught the attention of neighbors, who began hiring him to craft boats for them. Before long, Bob was able to leave his millwright job and dedicate himself full-time to boat building, founding Yandt Boat Works. From the 1910s to 1967, when the company built its final boat, Yandt Boat Works produced roughly 75 boats. In the early years, Bob focused on building fast, race-oriented boats, favoring designs by John L. Hacker. He would purchase the plans for these boats and meticulously construct them. Bob’s son, Robert, once shared with me that the most critical part of a boat's design is the hull—specifically, the underwater portion. It’s there that the true performance and ride come from; everything above the waterline, he said, is simply for aesthetics. As the years passed, Robert and his wife, Barbara, joined Bob in the boat-building business and eventually took over the operation. In the 1940s and 1950s, many of the Yandt boats served as water taxis, transporting people, groceries, mail, and other supplies around the lake. Later on, Bob and Robert began focusing more on simple, family-oriented runabouts for local customers in the Coeur d'Alene area.

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When Ron Yandt was about two years old, his family moved away from the lake and settled a few blocks inland, closer to town, in an effort to keep him safe from falling into the water. Despite this, he spent many days by the docks near Uncle Bob’s boat shop. Ron recalls waiting eagerly for an empty seat on one of the water taxis. He would wait for his uncle’s nod and hitch a ride with him, alongside the paying passengers. It was a thrill for the young boy to zoom around the lake, taking in the sights and sounds of the bustling waterfront.

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This love of boats became deeply ingrained in Ron’s life. As a child, family vacations almost always involved a boat, and often those vacations were spent at Priest Lake. Whenever they encountered a wooden boat, Ron would share stories with his children about Yandt Boat Works, Uncle Bob, and the boats that he remembered from his youth. As Ron got older, these conversations often ended with a shared promise: “Someday, we’ll find one of those old boats Uncle Bob built.”

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*Credit to the author: Excerpts of the above article were taken from Wes Yandt's Blog

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