Volume 12 , Issue 22

Fred Harvey & Harvey Houses

One of our readers says, "Thought you might want to send this article about Harvey Houses to Sandy." -- Comfort still king where Harvey ruled

The Boston Globe reporter, Stephen Fried, states, "For six years, I have been crisscrossing the country in search of Fred."

The reporter mentions also, "Fred Harvey, the demanding London-born immigrant whose family business revolutionized United States dining and travel. Harvey legendary hospitality empire along the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe railroad between Chicago and California sated the comfort-food-starved West."

Harvey was considered by many critics as a "A food missionary" on a quest to civilize the USA one meal at a time. Harvey began his quest in the mid-1870s with modest trackside eating houses in Kansas. It was not until the 1920s that Fred Harvey's white tablecloth restaurants were popping up with amazing fresh food, in lunchrooms, dining cars, resort hotels, union stations and retail stores in 80 cities from the Great Lakes to the Pacific and the Gulf of Mexico. Even at the rim of the Grand Canyon.

The Harvey Girls, American's Sweethearts, consisted of about 100,000 single women hired at the company's Kansas City, Missouri headquarters and dispatched to the Western locales. Especially, alongside the the Santa Fe railroad tracks.

If you are ever in Waynoka, Oklahoma, you should contact Sandy Olson with the Waynoka Historical Society and take a tour of the renovated Santa Fe Depot and Harvey House Museum.   |  View or Add Comments (0 Comments)   |   Receive updates ( subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

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