Fred Harvey History Weekend is an annual event founded by the New Mexico History Museum and La Fonda Hotel in Santa Fe (and overseen by MightMakesWriteLLC).

The Fred Harvey Fundraising Auction.For the past 12 years, the weekend has featured several days of diverse lectures, panels, demonstrations and performances. The highlight is the 

Fred Harvey Foodie Dinner & Auction at La Fonda, which raises money for the museum’s public programming. The auction includes unique historical items, some from the Harvey family’s own collection, or from the original Harvey hotels. Fred Harvey and Santa Fe RR memorabilia are highly collectible.

The auction begins as an online silent auction on November 9, 2021. It ends on Friday, November 12, with live and online bidding during the Foodie Dinner. If winners are present they take their items home; if winners are online we will arrange for their items to be shipped (at their expense.)

Please register for the auction here.

Please register for the History Weekend lectures (in-person or online) and the Foodie Dinner here.

This year’s auction will also raise money for the new Steve Wimmer Southwest History Research Fund at the museum, which was started this year in memory of the beloved La Fonda concierge. Steve Wimmer introduced several generations of NM travelers to Fred Harvey, ATSF and Southwest history. Direct donations to his memorial fund can also be made on this site.

The Wimmer Fund will:

1) make the collections of the museum and its historical library accessible through digitizing and online posting, and encourage their broader use

2) create an annual Steve Wimmer scholar program which allow several researchers a year to come to Santa Fe for historical research in the library (they will also present a short paper from their research)

3) purchase historic books from the 19th and 20th century, the period Steve was most fascinated with, that will expand the library’s collection
Every dollar raised by this auction goes directly to the New Mexico History Museum. Please bid actively and consider adding a donation to improve its audio, visual, and internet capacities, to assist with the digitizing the museum’s unique and growing collection of materials from the Fred Harvey company and Harvey family, as well as materials from the railroad and the rail restaurants and hotels in NM, and work done by Fred Harvey and New Mexico in partnership. These include exhibits at the World’s Fairs in St. Louis in 1906 and San Diego/San Francisco in 1915; decades of art commissioned by Harvey and the ATSF in NM; the political efforts to protect the work of Native artists; and much more.