Fish Creek Pond Campground, circa 1930. Adirondack Daily Enterprise, July 29, 2005 An island in Rollins Pond, 2006

Car Camping has been popular in the Adirondacks since 1920, when the Conservation Department (predecessor to the Department of Environmental Conservation) built the park's first campgrounds. Fish Creek and Rollins Pond campgrounds, just off of Upper Saranac Lake, presently the busiest campground in New York State, dates to this period, when the Conservation Department set up the first lean-tos and campfire circles.

In 1926, they built twenty campsites and added a well and bathrooms. The number of campsites was doubled in 1927, and again in 1928. The Civilian Conservation Corps did further expansion work from 1933 to 1935. In the 1950s, a second campground was built on nearby Rollins Pond; it was expanded in 1958 and again in 1960. As of 2009, there are 355 sites at Fish Creek and 287 at Rollins— at full occupancy, there are considerably more campers than there are in many small Adirondack villages.

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