Harvey Houses of Arizona

The Fred Harvey company was initially established in the 1880s to feed train passengers on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad as they stopped in stations along the line to/from the West Coast. But Fred Harvey’s dining legacy extends long beyond the closing of the last Harvey House restaurant serving train passengers: Witness the dozen books on the topic. The latest volume focuses on the Harvey businesses in our home state.

Harvey Houses of Arizona: Historic Hospitality from Winslow to the Grand Canyon by Rosa Walston Latimer (The History Press, 2019) provides a comprehensive overview of the Fred Harvey Company’s presence in Arizona. (Phoenix did not have a Harvey House restaurant, but the Phoenix train depot was served by a Harvey newsstand.) It covers everything from the early dining rooms to the luxury hotels along the line from Holbrook to Kingman, including the Harvey Farms established to supply the restaurants (early farm-to-table!). There’s even a section with classic recipes from the 1910s from the Santa Fe Railroad’s employee magazine.

Illustrated with vintage photographs, the book tells the story of many of the company’s Arizona-based employees. It describes life as a “Harvey Girl” (one of the few opportunities for women to strike out on their own at the beginning of the last century, albeit on a tightly chaperoned leash). Latimer also covers the history of the buildings housing Harvey properties (from early box cars to the luxurious La Posada in Winslow and El Tovar at the Grand Canyon, two places you can still visit today for a peek at Arizona’s past).