Appetite for America: How Visionary Businessman Fred Harvey Built a Railroad Hospitality Empire That Civilized the Wild West
by Stephen Fried, Bantam, New York, 2010, $27
The Harvey Girls was an award-winning 1946 musical starring Hollywood sensation Judy Garland, but the featured title waitresses were the real, if less musical, stuff—the first major female workforce in the United States. Their greatest impact came in the American West, where they served the railroad-riding public at Harvey’s “eating houses.” The man behind the serving girls, Fred Harvey, founded a legendary namesake company that operated from the 1880s through World War II. While the girls might get the attention then and now, this English-born entrepreneur created a name that became synonymous with quality and service, and, writes author Stephen Fried, “was actually the first widely known and respected brand name in America, established years before Coca-Cola.” Harvey ran all the restaurants and hotels along the Santa Fe Railroad between Chicago and Los Angeles. “While he died famous and wealthy, he was also a curiosity—a man out of time—because at the height of the Gilded Age, he became something much better understood today: the founding father of the American service industry,” writes Fried.
The author nicely captures Fred Harvey’s entrepreneurial vision but doesn’t neglect Ford Harvey, who ran the Harvey empire even longer than his father (while keeping mostly out of the spotlight). The company’s restaurants were a cut above the usual fare, even in places like Raton, New Mexico Territory, and Purcell, Oklahoma Territory (see “Western Enterprise,” P. 26). The company boosted Western tourism, as well as the popularity of American Indian art and Spanish-American architecture. Fried provides details (the book runs 544 pages) that are often compelling. This is a great read for anyone interested in the settling of the West, the railroads, 19th-century entrepreneurs, eating out and, of course, the “girls” of Fred Harvey.
Originally published in the April 2011 issue of Wild West. To subscribe, click here.
