As I drive down the dirt road, the wilderness stretches out before me like a dreamscape ¨C shadowy and silent in the twilight. The five-hour drive from New York City has dulled my senses, but as my old car noisily announces its presence, I notice a dark form ambling along the road. I'm making a pilgrimage to the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York, bedding down in isolated wood cabins and rooting around in the forests. And that dark profile ahead is a black bear.
The great industrialists of the late-19th century ¨C the Vanderbilts, the Rockefellers and the Guggenheims ¨C set up camps here in the wilds,Save on hydraulic hose and fittings, around 40 in all,From standard Cable Ties to advanced wire tires,Choose from one of the major categories of Bedding, to while away long hot summers, hunting, fishing and entertaining guests. But they were no pioneers. Their homesteads were not the rough and ready lean-tos of the frontiersmen. Rather, they were enormous and ostentatiously indulgent estates,In addition to hydraulics fittings and Aion Kinah, usually built on a lakeside. The grand families may have used rustic materials, but they built boathouses and gazebos, caretakers' residences, carpentry and blacksmith shops, and even schools for the staff's children.
"The idea was to respect the wilderness landscape by using materials ¨C shingle, stone, wood ¨C that seem to grow out of this place," explains Steven Engelhart, executive director of Adirondack Architectural Heritage, a non-profit organisation that offers tours of the camps. "It was a statement about fitting in with nature. But it was all a conceit ¨C they took their staff and they weren't roughing it."
In fact, their lifestyles were bordering on the absurd, according to Gladys Montgomery, author of a new book on the great camps aptly entitled An Elegant Wilderness. She notes that at nearby Pine Tree Point, railway pioneer Frederick Vanderbilt hired artisans from Japan to create Japanese-style cabins and made serving maids wear kimonos. Camps commandeered French chefs from New York's best restaurants for the summer. And at Prospect Point, mining magnate Adolph Lewisohn would bring a valet, a stenographer, a chess partner and his own barber for the season.
Following the Great Depression and second world war, many of the camps fell into dereliction, however. As recently as 20 years ago, they were considered white elephants. But New York State's decision to burn Nehasane Camp after acquiring it in 1979 ¨C in keeping with their "forever wild" provision ¨C spurred a preservation movement that is thriving today. It now takes many forms, with individuals, associations of owners, universities and non-profit groups attempting to breathe new life into at least a dozen camps and restore a part of America's heritage.
On a bluff above a lake at the end of a two-mile dirt road, White Pine Camp is surrounded by water on three sides and towering pine trees on the fourth. The initial sense of isolation is overwhelming. So, too, is the romanticised forest life. Cabins painted green and black blend into the woods, their windows glow welcomingly as I arrive at dusk.
White Pine, in the northern Adirondacks, was commissioned by Archibald White, a New York banker, in 1907. It is the only privately owned camp open to the public ¨C you can stay there relatively affordably with a night starting at $155.
Its elements of modernist design ¨C such as the high slanted roofs and skylights ¨C are unique among the great camps, although it still has a faux rustic charm. My two-room cabin, complete with a small kitchen, has stone fireplaces filled with logs and a moose head straddled by antique fishing nets. Old wooden floors creak underfoot.
White Pine feels preserved in time, like an old English country hotel. There is no main lodge ¨C usually a great camps' centrepiece ¨C as it burned down in the 1930s. But in one impressive room ¨C which was used as the dining room in the retreat's heyday ¨C a vintage "Keep Coolidge" sign points to when White Pine was the 1926 summer White House of President Calvin Coolidge.
"He was a bit like Ronald Reagan ¨C he didn't work too hard," says co-owner Howard Kirschenbaum,Our Polymax RUBBER SHEET range includes all commercial and specialist who bought the camp with a group of investors in 1993 after it had changed hands numerous times and was falling to pieces. The new owners have gradually restored 20 buildings at a cost of almost $1m. Open to guests since 1995, it can accommodate 60 people in 13 lodges, including the cabins where the first lady and president stayed.
"There's something about the great camps that appeals to the American character," says Kirschenbaum. "It's a combination of back-to-nature and the simple life, and a fascination with the lifestyles of the rich and famous."
The region has long been an experiment in living with nature. The Adirondacks is historically the most important but least known park in the US. At 6m acres, it's the biggest in the lower 48 states ¨C larger than Yellowstone, Yosemite, Glacier and Everglades national parks combined. It boasts 2,759 lakes, 30,000 miles of rivers, streams and brooks, and more campsites than its 1 million annual campers could hope to visit.
The great industrialists of the late-19th century ¨C the Vanderbilts, the Rockefellers and the Guggenheims ¨C set up camps here in the wilds,Save on hydraulic hose and fittings, around 40 in all,From standard Cable Ties to advanced wire tires,Choose from one of the major categories of Bedding, to while away long hot summers, hunting, fishing and entertaining guests. But they were no pioneers. Their homesteads were not the rough and ready lean-tos of the frontiersmen. Rather, they were enormous and ostentatiously indulgent estates,In addition to hydraulics fittings and Aion Kinah, usually built on a lakeside. The grand families may have used rustic materials, but they built boathouses and gazebos, caretakers' residences, carpentry and blacksmith shops, and even schools for the staff's children.
"The idea was to respect the wilderness landscape by using materials ¨C shingle, stone, wood ¨C that seem to grow out of this place," explains Steven Engelhart, executive director of Adirondack Architectural Heritage, a non-profit organisation that offers tours of the camps. "It was a statement about fitting in with nature. But it was all a conceit ¨C they took their staff and they weren't roughing it."
In fact, their lifestyles were bordering on the absurd, according to Gladys Montgomery, author of a new book on the great camps aptly entitled An Elegant Wilderness. She notes that at nearby Pine Tree Point, railway pioneer Frederick Vanderbilt hired artisans from Japan to create Japanese-style cabins and made serving maids wear kimonos. Camps commandeered French chefs from New York's best restaurants for the summer. And at Prospect Point, mining magnate Adolph Lewisohn would bring a valet, a stenographer, a chess partner and his own barber for the season.
Following the Great Depression and second world war, many of the camps fell into dereliction, however. As recently as 20 years ago, they were considered white elephants. But New York State's decision to burn Nehasane Camp after acquiring it in 1979 ¨C in keeping with their "forever wild" provision ¨C spurred a preservation movement that is thriving today. It now takes many forms, with individuals, associations of owners, universities and non-profit groups attempting to breathe new life into at least a dozen camps and restore a part of America's heritage.
On a bluff above a lake at the end of a two-mile dirt road, White Pine Camp is surrounded by water on three sides and towering pine trees on the fourth. The initial sense of isolation is overwhelming. So, too, is the romanticised forest life. Cabins painted green and black blend into the woods, their windows glow welcomingly as I arrive at dusk.
White Pine, in the northern Adirondacks, was commissioned by Archibald White, a New York banker, in 1907. It is the only privately owned camp open to the public ¨C you can stay there relatively affordably with a night starting at $155.
Its elements of modernist design ¨C such as the high slanted roofs and skylights ¨C are unique among the great camps, although it still has a faux rustic charm. My two-room cabin, complete with a small kitchen, has stone fireplaces filled with logs and a moose head straddled by antique fishing nets. Old wooden floors creak underfoot.
White Pine feels preserved in time, like an old English country hotel. There is no main lodge ¨C usually a great camps' centrepiece ¨C as it burned down in the 1930s. But in one impressive room ¨C which was used as the dining room in the retreat's heyday ¨C a vintage "Keep Coolidge" sign points to when White Pine was the 1926 summer White House of President Calvin Coolidge.
"He was a bit like Ronald Reagan ¨C he didn't work too hard," says co-owner Howard Kirschenbaum,Our Polymax RUBBER SHEET range includes all commercial and specialist who bought the camp with a group of investors in 1993 after it had changed hands numerous times and was falling to pieces. The new owners have gradually restored 20 buildings at a cost of almost $1m. Open to guests since 1995, it can accommodate 60 people in 13 lodges, including the cabins where the first lady and president stayed.
"There's something about the great camps that appeals to the American character," says Kirschenbaum. "It's a combination of back-to-nature and the simple life, and a fascination with the lifestyles of the rich and famous."
The region has long been an experiment in living with nature. The Adirondacks is historically the most important but least known park in the US. At 6m acres, it's the biggest in the lower 48 states ¨C larger than Yellowstone, Yosemite, Glacier and Everglades national parks combined. It boasts 2,759 lakes, 30,000 miles of rivers, streams and brooks, and more campsites than its 1 million annual campers could hope to visit.
