As early as the 1820s, people from cities came to the Adirondacks to fish and hunt. Some came to get away from their worries by experiencing the beauty and quiet of nature. Others hoped a stay in the woods would improve their health. Many believed that breathing in the clean balsam air of the Adirondacks would cure them of lung diseases such as tuberculosis.

People who lived in the Adirondacks soon learned that they were needed by tourists who came to the woods. Adirondackers knew where to hunt and fish; they knew how to build boats and bark shelters; they knew how to start a campfire and cook what they'd caught. Above all they knew their way through the forest and along the lakes and rivers that threaded through the vast isolated region where they lived. Men and woman who had always fished, hunted and trapped to feed their own families now hired themselves out to these "sportsmen" or "sports" as the visitors were called.