The Santa Fe Line and the famous Fred Harvey restaurants forever changed New Mexico and the Southwest, bringing commerce, culture and opportunity to a desolate frontier. The first Harvey Girls ever hired staffed the Raton location. In a departure from the ubiquitous black and white uniform immortalized by Judy Garland in 1946's Harvey Girls, many of New Mexico's Harvey Girls wore colorful dresses reflective of local culture. In Albuquerque, the Harvey-managed Alvarado Hotel doubled as a museum for carefully curated native art. Join author Rosa Walston Latimer and discover New Mexico's unique history of hospitality the "Fred Harvey way."

The Fred Harvey name will forever be associated with the high-quality restaurants, hotels, and resorts situated along the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway in the American Southwest. The Fred Harvey Company surprised travelers, who were accustomed to "dingy beaneries" staffed with "rough waiters," by presenting attractive, courteous servers known as the Harvey Girls. Today many Harvey Houses serve as museums, offices, and civic centers throughout the Southwest. Only a few Harvey Houses remain as first-class hotels, and they are located at the Grand Canyon, in Winslow, Arizona, and in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

The award-winning history of the women who went West to work in Fred Harvey's restaurants along the Santa Fe railway -- and went on to shape the American Southwest From the 1880s to the 1950s, the Harvey Girls went west to work in Fred Harvey's restaurants along the Santa Fe railway. At a time when there were "no ladies west of Dodge City and no women west of Albuquerque," they came as waitresses, but many stayed and settled, founding the struggling cattle and mining towns that dotted the region. Interviews, historical research, and photographs help re-create the Harvey Girl experience. The accounts are personal, but laced with the history the women lived: the dust bowl, the depression, and anecdotes about some of the many famous people who ate at the restaurants--Teddy Roosevelt, Shirley Temple, Bob Hope, to name a few. The Harvey Girls was awarded the winner of the 1991 New Mexico Press Women's ZIA award.

A true story of the women who worked in Fred Harvey's chain of restaurants along the Santa Fe railroad depicts pioneer women with wage-earing power

In 1919, fourteen-year-old Clara Fern Massie runs away from her family's farm in Missouri to earn a living and find adventure as a Harvey Girl, one of the waitresses who worked at Harvey House restaurants along the railroads in the Southwest United States.

Recipes from the original "In Harvey Service" column in the Santa Fe Railroad magazine and the employee magazine "Hospitality" published in the 1940s and 1950s intersperced with the history of the restaurants.

Bestselling novelist Tracie Peterson joins Karen Witemeyer, Regina Jennings, and Jen Turano in this collection of four novellas, each featuring a Harvey Girl heroine. From Kansas to Texas, the Grand Canyon to New Mexico, the stories cross the country with tales of sweet romance and entertaining history. In Karen Witemeyer's "More Than a Pretty Face," a young woman works her hardest to escape poor choices from her youth. Tracie Peterson offers "A Flood of Love," where reuniting with an old flame after more than a decade offers unexpected results. Regina Jennings's "Intrigue a la Mode" delights with a tale of a young woman determined to help support her family, despite warnings of danger nearby. And Jen Turano's "Grand Encounters" heads to the Grand Canyon with a tale of a society belle intent on finding a new life for herself.