The camp meeting is a venerable tradition of Methodist and Presbyterian churches, and is a distinctly American contribution to Protestantism. The earliest camp meeting recorded took place in Kentucky in 1800. The Camp Meeting at Salem Campground in Newton County, some 40 miles east of Atlanta, started in 1828, and, except for the period of the Civil War, has taken place every year since its inception.

In its early years, the camp meeting took place in the summer after the crops were "laid by." Families from several surrounding counties loaded their wagons with a week's provisions, brought along a cow for milk and headed to Salem for a week's holiday, usually their one vacation of the year.

Campers in those early years generally slept in or under their wagons. Some used wagon sheets as tents, and to this day the term "tent" has been reserved at the campground for the cottages in which current campers stay. Poorer families stayed in actual tents while wealthier families began to construct crude wooden shanties with dirt floors.

Though electric lights and plumbing were added in 1939, many of today's more up-to-date "tents" retain the dirt floors and are deliberately kept quite spare and reflect the style and spareness of those early years. Campers, along with their servants, continued to bring their cows, chickens and water to the campground well into the twentieth century.