TIMES RECORD • December 20, 2024
Peaking in the early 1900s at some 300, commercially run Maine sporting camps today number a few dozen, as many have closed or been sold to private individuals or corporations that no longer take paying guests. At the same time, some remaining camps are thriving. Maine’s first camps were influenced by the development of grand, private “camps” (read “mansions”) in New York’s Adirondack mountains. Guidebooks and other publicity in the late 1800s brought attention to the Rangeley Lakes area of western Maine and eventually to northern regions of the state. The more rustic camps there targeted traveling sportsmen. The future of sporting camps is “uncertain given the number of issues that they face,” wrote Catherine Cyr, associate curator at the Maine Maritime Museum in Bath in her master’s thesis about Maine camps.