By the 1880s, “camping out” had become a popular pastime. Places like the Adirondacks were lauded as ideal retreats for anyone seeking to improve their health by virtue of clean air and moderate exercise. The growth of the cities and industry created a desire to retreat to the forests and countryside.

The national passion for camping reached Cornwall by the turn of the century. In 1901, George Chandler Harrison built the first cabin on Cream Hill Lake and named it Laurel Lodge. It was followed by John E. Calhoun’s The Nutshell and the Yutzler family’s Camp Tak-it-ezy (take it easy).

“‘Camping out’ is becoming merely a name for moving out of one’s permanent habitation and dwelling for a few weeks in a well-built lodge, smaller than one’s home, but as comfortable and almost as convenient; with tables, chairs and crockery, carpets and curtains, beds with sheets and blankets on real bedsteads, a stove and its full outfit of cooking utensils, wherefrom meals are served in the regular ways of civilization… This misnamed camping out has become a fashion which seems likely to last till the shores are as thronged as the towns, and the woods are spoiled for real campers….”

~ Rowland Evans Robinson, In New England Fields and Woods, 1896

“Camping, until of late years, has been the almost exclusive enjoyment of men, women having been considered rather useless and burdensome under the circumstances… but now that women have proved that they are not so frail and helpless… camp life has taken on a new charm.”

~ Jessamy Harte, “A Camp in the Adirondacks,”
Ladies’ Home Journal, July 1892

“From my experience and observation, I am thoroughly convinced that camp-life in dry places, and at a reasonable altitude above the water, especially in a pine grove, has a wonderful effect in benefitting and restoring weak lungs.”

~ The Adirondacks as a Health Resort, 1886