The Adirondack Camping Craze
Before 1869, camping in the Adirondack Mountains was limited for the most part to the fishermen and hunters who visited the upstate New York region. The terrain was as it had always been, tangled, rocky, and challenging to all but experienced outdoorsmen. The region around Saranac Lake was a favorite area for fishing in the summer and hunting in the fall, with typically fine weather. Beginning in 1864 a prosperous Congregationalist Minister named William Henry Harrison Murray began making annual hunting and fishing trips to the region, preferring to camp at Raquette Lake on Osprey Island. His congregations disapproved of his leisure activities.
Murray kept journals of his camping trips, and in the spring of 1869 published them in a book entitled Adventures in the Wilderness. Murray’s work extolled the beauty of nature and was dismissive of his own efforts as a hunter and fisherman in a humorous manner which added to the sense of peace to be found in the wilderness. Originally published in April, it was in its tenth printing by July and sold thousands of copies. Critics were dismissive of its content and its prose but the public loved it, and at one point it sold at the rate of 500 copies per week. Its impact was felt in the Adirondacks that summer.
Where before the summer of 1869 the area might host 200 or so hunters and outdoorsmen, that year thousands swarmed over the region, most of them carrying with them copies of Murray’s book. Up to 3,000 visitors arrived from New England, New York, Pennsylvania, and other points around the country. Murray’s book was sold on the trains carrying the visitors, and the steamers, and at the coach stops and inns along the routes traveled. Murray’s readers were seeking the peace to be found in the wilderness, and the beauty of nature, and his book told of several locations where both could be had. It did not discuss being prepared for nature.
Although Murray described special articles of clothing with which women should have equipped themselves, many did not, and the difficult terrain limited the amount of hiking and other activities which could be accomplished in the standard garb of the day. To take advantage of this situation, camp grounds and camps based around cabins and cottages were erected throughout the more accessible areas of the Adirondacks. By 1870 special trains were scheduled to accommodate the rush of campers who resorted to the area to commune with nature. A new industry arose around Murray’s pilgrims; the camping industry.
Those who sniffed at Murray’s work called his followers “Murray’s Fools” for their seeking of peace in the harmony of nature rather than in the church pew. The craze lasted for several years, with Murray publishing additional articles which discussed the need to temporarily escape the dreariness of office or shop and return to nature. Murray’s theories were dismissed by most clergy and experts on the human condition, but avidly followed by his supporters. At his urging, they vacated their offices and refreshed themselves in a new manner. It was from Murray that the word vacation entered the American lexicon, replacing the holiday still used by the British.