He paddled a 58-pound paper canoe 2,000 miles from Quebec to the Gulf of Mexico
Voyage of the Paper Canoe: 2500 Miles from Quebec to the Gulf of Mexico, 1874-5
In 1874 Nathaniel H. Bishop set out from Quebec in an 18-foot wooden canoe, bound for the Gulf of Mexico by the continent's connecting waterways. At Troy, New York, he swapped it for a 58-pound paper boat built by E. Waters & Sons and paddled roughly 2,000 miles alone to Florida. He credits the U.S. Coast Survey's charts for guiding him through the southern marshes, and recounts the hospitality he met along the way.
The advantages in using a boat of only fifty-eight pounds weight, the strength and durability of which had been well and satisfactorily tested, could not be questioned, and the author dismissed his assistant, and "paddled his own canoe" about two thousand miles to the end of the journey.
- brudgers
I was reminded of this children's book, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paddle-to-the-Sea
I have not thought of it for many many years.
- fwipsy
Technical overview of the invention and manufacture of paper boats in this chapter: https://www.ibiblio.org/eldritch/nhb/paperc/c05.html
I guess that they were a sort of intermediate technology between wooden canoes and fiberglass?
Quick Google says that the lightest modern canoes are made of carbon fiber and weigh as little as 20 pounds.