A new trend in holiday-home ownership harks back to the days of the Great Camps, says Sarah Barrell

The Rockefellers, Vanderbilts and Carnegies may have had the funds to propel 19th-century America through its post-Civil War economic boom, but for these Gilded-Age elite families, holidays were about the modest pleasures in life.

In summer during the 1800s, the most prominent East Coast families would gather up their sturdier kitchen wear, linen and packhorses and set out on camping retreats in the Adirondack Mountains, in deepest upstate New York. In reality these rustic jollies were more akin to a modern-day five-star safari, with elaborately designed log cabins that became known as the Great Camps.

Independent on Sunday Travel section: http://www.independent.co.uk/travel/americas/luxury-breaks-now-you-can-buy-a-piece-of-the-american-dream-396245.html