York Archery Catalogs and History
York archery was a division of the Woodcraft Equipment Company, headquartered in Independence Missouri. It is not clear if Woodcraft manufactured anything other than archery equipment. They billed themselves as the "the nation's oldest builder of quality archery equipment". Their York Archery company made a lot of early lemonwood bows. The beginning of York archery is thought to be 1923. The 1942 catalog states they had been making archery equipment for the past 19 years, which would put them back to 1923. Also, the 1973 "50th Anniversary" catalog would again put them back to 1923. Their catalogs date back to at least 1932.
Ken Smith Sr. was the president of Woodcraft Equipment Company. Upon the death of Sr. in 1972, his son Ken Smith Jr. assumed management of the company.
York Archery made standard longbows of mostly Lemonwood and Hickory from the 1930s through the late 1950s. In the 1960s they developed some nice target and hunting bows, such as the Constellation, Imperial, Crest, Super Crest, Thunderbolt, Crescent, Crown, Coronet, Trophy, Clipper, Tracker, Clipper, and other entry-level bows. The collector's gem of the bunch is the target model Constellation, which was made from 1964 through 1967 (See the 1964 catalog cover to the left featuring the new Constellation). In the 1970s York joined the compound bow revolution and introduced several compound bow models with some success. York is reported to have gone out of business in 1990.
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