The Harvey Girls
When the railroad was King, the Harvey Girls were Queens.
The Lady Outlaws of the Old West—the likes of Belle Starr, Calamity Jane, and a host of others of legend, shared the stage at the very same time with ladies of a decidedly different stripe – The Harvey Girls. The Fred Harvey Girls.
Young and lovely visions in well-fitted black long-skirted shirtwaists and crisply starched white aprons, hair modestly restrained by company-mandated crisp white ribbons, these refined ladies are credited with “civilizing” the Southwest. In the 1870s, the records say there were "no ladies west of Dodge City," and "no women west of Albuquerque." Fred Harvey and his Harvey Girls changed all that.
"Wanted: Young women, 18 to 30 years of age, of good character, attractive and intelligent, as waitresses in Harvey Eating Houses in the West. Good wages, with room and meals furnished." These ads, circulated predominantly on the East Coast drew young girls to the employ of Fred Harvey, to serve as genteel waitresses in his hotels, which he established along the rails lines of the Santa Fe Railroad. The women had to be of good moral character, have at least an eighth grade education, display good manners, be neat and articulate, good conversationalists, to work in his restaurants. Many were school teachers, lured by the excitement of the unknown and a chance for romance. In return for employment, the Harvey Girls would agree to a six month contract, agree not to marry and abide by all company rules during the term of employment. If hired, they were given a rail pass to get to their Company-chosen destination. In many ways, these fine Eastern ladies were very similar to the ladies of outlaw legend; in that, in those times, women who struck out on their own, earned their own money, living and working in the Wild West, were considered odd, if not “loose” women. These women all left the protection and sometimes poverty of home to make their own way in life while having a bit of adventure.
Legends grew up around them and their restaurant employer. Will Rogers said he just figured Fred Harvey and his girls "kept the West in food and wives." The Harvey Girls brought culture, refinement and romance to a section where buffalo herds, attacking Indians, horse thieving, murder and assorted mayhem was common. One legend has it that 20,000 of the pretty and educated “waitresses” wound up as brides to western ranchers, cowboys and railroadmen, founding many of the first families of the West. Many of the male offspring of these unions were named "Fred" or "Harvey" after the man who had the vision to civilize the region.
The Harvey Girls were housed in dormitories presided over by house mothers. They were looked after as carefully and fussed over as assiduously as boarding school students were at the "female seminaries" in the east. In those Wild West days, historians say some of even the wildest western characters changed their ways and were seen accompanied the Harvey Girls to church on Sunday. “Gentlemen callers” were permitted to call at certain hours in the well-chaperoned parlors, on the condition that they left their six-shooters at the door. It was a small price to pay to be in the company of the delightful-looking and refined Harvey Girls, and have one or more favor a local cleaned-up cowboy with her chaperoned company. And it wasn’t too long before the cowboys and cattlemen who tried to spur their horses up the steps and right into Harvey Houses were persuaded to change their manners. They even agreed to wear the dark alpaca coats Fred Harvey kept on hand and demanded his coatless gentlemen diners wear. Doubtless, the Harvey Girls were impressed!
The Harvey Girls is a 1942 novel by Samuel Hopkins Adams about Fred Harvey's famous Harvey Houses, which was subsequently made into a 1946 MGM musical. The film starred Judy Garland, John Hodiak, Angela Lansbury, Virginia O'Brien, Ray Bolger, and Marjorie Main, and was directed by George Sidney. It won an Academy Award for Best Song for "On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe", written by Johnny Mercer and Harry Warren.
