Fred Harvey Company
[5][6] These cafés were opened by Fred Harvey, then a freight agent for the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad, who emigrated to the United States from London, England, when he was 17 years old.
[5] These initial few café operations ended within a year, but their success had convinced Harvey of the potential profitability in providing higher-quality food and service experiences at railroad eating establishments.
The company, with its employees including renowned waitresses later known as Harvey Girls, successfully brought higher standards of food service and cuisine to a region then mainly known as "the Wild West".
[2] In the late 1950s it operated, for the first 15 years, the then-new landmark Illinois Tollway "Oases" which were built above the Interstate 294 highway in the Chicago suburbs by Standard Oil of Indiana (Amoco).
[12] Portions of the Fred Harvey Company have continued to operate since 1968 as part of a larger hospitality industry conglomerate, Amfac, Inc. which became Xanterra Parks and Resorts in 2002.
By the late 1880s, there was a Fred Harvey dining facility located every 100 miles along the AT&SF, the interval in which its trains needed to refuel and load water.
[5] The company maintained two dairy facilities (the larger of which was situated in Las Vegas, New Mexico) to ensure a consistent and adequate supply of fresh milk.
Harvey's meals were served in sumptuous portions that provided a good value for the traveling public; for instance, pies were cut into fourths, rather than sixths, which was the industry standard at the time.
[5] The Harvey Company and AT&SF established a series of signals that allowed the dining room staff to make the necessary preparations to feed an entire train in just thirty minutes.
[2] This mutually beneficial relationship, characterized as one of the most successful and influential business partnerships in the early American West, endured until 1968, when the Fred Harvey Company was sold to Amfac Inc., now Xanterra Resorts and Parks.
[5] For the Southwest, Harvey hired architects Charles Whittlesey and Louis Curtiss for influential landmark hotels in Santa Fe and Gallup, New Mexico.
[14] The rugged, landscape-integrated, and culturally appropriate design principles there influenced a generation of subsequent Western U.S. architecture through the National Park Service and Civilian Conservation Corps structures built during the Great Depression and after.
[15] Hopi House and Bright Angel Lodge, both on the south rim of the Grand Canyon, are prime examples of her work, which influenced popular interpretations of “the desert” and indigenous America.
[16] The Harvey team, with the backing of the Santa Fe railroad, created an entire set of cultural images based on the region's distinctive, and often overlooked, artistic traditions of the Native American residents and the early Spanish settlers in the area.
Especially noteworthy were the buildings on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, including lodges, souvenirs shops, and special lookout points, today on the National Register of Historic Places.
In addition to the AT&SF, the Harvey Company operated dining facilities for the Gulf Coast & Santa Fe, Kansas Pacific, St. Louis-San Francisco, and the Terminal Railroad Association of St. Louis railways.
He sought single, well-mannered, and educated American ladies, and placed ads in newspapers throughout the East Coast and Midwest for "white, young women, 18–30 years of age, of good character, attractive and intelligent".
Harvey Girls (as they soon came to be known) were required to enter into a six-month employment contract, and forfeited half their base pay should they fail to complete the term of service.
[21] This legend found expression in The Harvey Girls, a 1942 novel by Samuel Hopkins Adams and in the 1946 MGM musical film of the same name which was inspired by it, starring Judy Garland.
