Since 1876, when English immigrant Fred Harvey took over the trackside restaurants of the fledgling Santa Fe Railroad, people have been asking who the hell he is, and why his restaurants, hotels, dining cars and Harvey Girl waitresses were so intriguing.

From a second-floor train station dining room in Topeka, Kansas, the forty-something hospitality entrepreneur grew his company until it extended from Chicago West to the Pacific, and South to the Gulf of Mexico—over sixty-five restaurants and lunch counters, sixty dining cars, a dozen large hotels, and all the retail shops in five of the nation’s largest union stations. Fred himself died in 1901, just as his son Ford and the company were embarking on their greatest adventure—El Tovar, a four-star hotel at the lip of the Grand Canyon. It was the cornerstone of an empire that reinvented tourism in the Southwest, and introduced the world to Native American art, cowboy culture, mission architecture, the Santa Fe Style of company design guru Mary Colter, and New York and Paris quality food and service in the middle of nowhere. The multigenerational business became so much part of American history and culture that in 1946 Judy Garland starred in an Oscar-winning musical film about Fred and his waitresses, “The Harvey Girls.”

Except for the hotels at the Grand Canyon and La Fonda in Santa Fe, most Harvey locations closed after the second world war and the company was sold in the 1970s. But a renaissance in interest in all things Fred Harvey, Santa Fe Railway, Harvey Girls and Mary Colter began in the 1990s, as a way of reinvigorating old western railroad towns, starting with the restoration of La Posada in Winslow, Arizona. The 2010 publication of a new biography of Fred, Appetite for America, and events in New Mexico and Arizona, helped Harvey fans (or “FredHeads”) from all over the world start finding each other. And a great old American story now inspires a new generation. As you glance through the ever-growing amount of information this site, we hope you will enjoy learning more about this business pioneer in the Southwest.