(I'm dead serious. There was an article in American Heritage magazine that proposed that theory!)
When my father was young (he grew up in Rome, GA, which is in the foothills of the mountains and quite bearable compared to down here on the GA coast) the entire town cleared out in the summer and went to the mountains. His family had a cottage in Monteagle TN and they just stayed there until fall.
No wonder nothing got done!
Hey, I've always thought that! I'd always heard of people moving to the mountains for the summer. I think their reasoning at the time was to get away from the "bad air" that brought on the Malaria. Back then they didn't know that the mosquitoes were what was carrying it.