In summer the lakes, streams and pine forests of Çamlıyayla attract many visitors, people from Adana, Mersin and Tarsus escaping from the extreme heat on the coast to summer homes up in the hills (see yayla).

Çamlıyayla is a quiet rural area without the wild nightlife to entertain young people and is therefore popular with families and the retired, typically children stay in the hills with their grandparents while their parents are at work in the city; in the school holiday period the population of the district rises to over 100,000.

There is a mountain goat breeding centre in Çamlıyayla and people go there to hunt for wild boar, rabbits and sandgrouse.

The early history of the area is unknown but these hills must have been occupied from the earliest times.

Near the edge of the town is the sprawling Hetʽumid castle of Lampron, an Armenian construction of the 11th and 12th centuries, which has a few structural remains from the earlier late antique and Byzantine periods.