I mean it never, ever fails. As soon as I finish whatever historical novel I’m working on, the moment it leaves my hands for the last time, I find that one more resource I absolutely, positively should have read before I wrote the book. And behold! Harvey Houses of New Mexico: Historic Hospitality from Raton to Deming by Rosa Walston Latimer. Which I just finished reading on December 6, while my novel, The Harvey Girl, left my clutching grasp for the last time on September 17th.

Latimer has a leg up on probably anyone who ever writes about the Harvey Girls because, as we discover on page 114

Rincon plays an important part in my family history, as my grandmother, Gertrude mcCormick, was a Harvey Girl in this small Harvey House, and it was there that she met my grandfather.

I can only say that she does her grandmother proud in this work, as it must have taken her years to visit the sites of so many New Mexico Harvey Houses and to interview what must have been every last living Harvey Girl in the American Southwest, who all had their stories to tell. Charles Lindbergh’s plane breaks down and he lands it next to the Harvey House in Vaughn and Harvey Girl Elisa Garnas was chosen by the manager to wait on him because she was the only one who didn’t make a fuss over him. It was a maxim in the Harvey Houses that everyone was treated exactly the same.

In turn, the Harvey Girls, who some posit were the first uniformed service for women, got board and room and more money that they would have made at any other job. About those uniforms:

One benefit Harvey Girls enjoyed was being able to send their uniforms out to be laundeed. Uniforms were expected to be sparkling clean at all times, which often meant changing several times during a busy shift. Explaining this luxury to me, one Harvey Girl said, “We’d put the dirty uniforms in a large canvas basket. They sent it on the train to the nearest laundry and my uniforms would come back clean and starched in a couple of days. All I had to do was iron them. I was living in the lap of luxury!”

Remember the Forty-Niners in California sending their laundry to China on clipper ships? Harvey employees also got free passes wherever the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad drove trains, like, say, Raton, where, Latimer says

That original Raton Harvey House could be called the birthplace of Harvey Girls. Certainly the idea of Harvey Girls began in this tiny New Mexico town. When the Santa Fe railroad came to Raton, a Harvey House was established and an all-male staff served the eating-house patrons, who were mostly miners, cowboys and railroad men. Following an after-hours fight involving the staff, no one was able to work the next morning.* When word of the situation reached Fred harvey, he took the train to Raton to remedy the situation. An enraged Harvey fired everyone and hired a new manager, Tom Gable. Tom proposed replacing the disorderly men with attractive young women, correctly reasoning that the women would be more reliable and cause less trouble. He believed the change in staff would also be well received by train passengers and the community. Harvey agreed. Using popular women’s magazines and newspapers, he began advertising for “attractive and intelligent young women eighteen to twenty years of age” to move to the West for employment.

This book is filled to the brim with Harvey Girl vignettes from all over New Mexico, Territory and State. Each of the Harvey Girls is distinguished, says Latimer, by a quality of daring and a sense of adventure. I would add, they must all have had a robust sense of humor, too.

There is a great description of the floods that wiped out the town of San Marcial, including the Harvey House there, where the Harvey House employees and some of townspeople sheltered on the house’s second floor.

There are two versions of the rescue the following morning, one involving a large motorboat from Elephant Butte, a nearby lake. Another describe a local cowboy riding his horse through the deep water, making many trips to carry those stranded in the Harvey House to safety. Personally, I like the second version. It would make a better movie.

I quite agree. And now I have a must-see list for my next FH research trip into New Mexico, and a start on a third.

We writers who bend historical fact to suit our fiction owe everything to the real historians who do all the heavy lifting for us. Thank you.

*Stephen Fried’s account of this event in Appetite for America is somewhat different.

Launching from the Poisoned Pen Bookstore on February 28th.

Although this would probably be closer to it,
and the hairstyle definitely is.
(Kansasmemory.gov)

Book Review Monday Chatter The Harvey Girl Fred Harvey Harvey Houses of New Mexico Rosa Walston Latimer