THE FRED HARVEY STORY

Former Governor Howard Pyle expressed his appreciation on December 3rd, 1951, when he wrote the Fred Harvey Company, "The people of Arizona are deeply grateful for the vital part the Harvey House has played in the building of this great state."

"The Coming of Fred Harvey" is the title of a chapter in James Marshall's book, "Santa Fe, The Railroad That Built An Empire," in which he gives Harvey credit for civilizing the West that is, so far as eating facilities and table manners went. Many others spread the fame of Fred Harvey in books, magazines, newspapers, poetry and motion pictures. Among them, Frederick Tisdale wrote "Englishman's U.S. Revolution" for HOLIDAY; Dickson Hartwell placed "Let's Eat With The Harvey Boys" in COLLIERS and Lucius Beebe wrote "Purveyor To The West" for AMERICAN HERITAGE.

Working for his Master of Arts Degree in History at the University of Arizona, James David Henderson researched eighty-two publications and printed pieces to come up with his thesis, "Meals by Fred Harvey A Phenomenon of the American West."

There is a Digest of Henderson's Thesis once printed in "Arizona and the West," by the University of Arizona, and the whole thesis is to be printed in book form by Texas Christian University Press.

Credit and praise have not gone to Fred Harvey alone during these ninety-two years of multiple services lunch counters, dining rooms, hotels, newsstands, curio shops and various transportation services scattered over "three thousand miles of hospitality" across the West and Southwest with a slight penetration into the South. Right up front in the eating establishments, and often on the front page, have been the Harvey Girls a vital part of the Harvey tradition almost from the beginning.

The Harvey Houses might have provided the atmosphere and the finest food in the land, but it was served with a smile by the Harvey Girls. They had an opportunity to make friends with many substantial citizens along the line which eventually led many of them down the matrimonial trail, so many, in fact, that Will Rogers once said Fred Harvey kept the West in food and wives.

Harvey House staff Kingman, Arizona 1930.

I have seen some splendid paintings in my day, And I have looked at faultless statuary; I have seen the orchard trees a-bloom in May, And watched their colors in the shadows vary; I have viewed the noblest shrines in Italy, And gazed upon the richest mosques of Turkey But the fairest of all sights, it seems to me, Was the Harvey girl I saw in Albuquerque. Leiger Mitchell Hodges, Philadelphia North American May 5, 1905.

Poets used their talents to praise the Harvey Girls in verse that told of their unmistakable admiration:

The aroma most enticing, Blending with the steam, The face across the hazy cup The vision of a queen. I like my morning coffee, Before the busy noon, When she has time to chatter, While I dally with my spoon. All dressed in spotless linen, Her hair all in a curl, So purely sweetly winning, Is the happy Harvey girl. John Moore, The Amarillo Globe December 24, 1931.

The story of Fred Harvey began inconspicuously in 1850 when the fifteen-year-old boy with ten dollars in his pocket boarded a sailing vessel in England to become a speck in the swelling tide of immigrants heading westward to the challenges of the New World. In New York his restaurant experience started with a job washing dishes for $2.00 a week and meals. Like thousands of other immigrants, young Harvey intended to use New York only as a stopping place before heading for opportunities that beckoned from beyond the Appalachians. By diligence and thrift he was able to save enough money for his boat trip to New Orleans. He was able to get work in the finest restaurants and hotels and to get a good look at fashionable dining rooms with luxurious surroundings. This opportunity doubtless fired his imagination and stirred his ambition to have a restaurant of his own.

Harvey Houses, don't you savvy, Clean across the old Mojave, On the Santa Fe they've strung 'em Like a string of Indian beads. We all couldn't eat without 'em, But the slickest thing about 'em Is the Harvey skirts that hustle up the feeds. J. C. Davis, Devore, California, 1895.

About with yellow fever slowed him down and caused him to move on up river to St. Louis, the rich, bustling gateway to the West. By now Harvey was twenty. He worked as a jeweler and tailor for four years, saving his money, and then found a partner and started his first restaurant. After accumulating a tidy stake, he married Barbara Sarah Mattos. Restaurant success was short lived. With the outbreak of the Civil War, his partner took off for the South with the restaurant funds. Out of business and broke, a job on the Missouri River Packet Line was a stepping stone and an introduction to the railroads of the West when Harvey signed on as a mail clerk at the St. Joseph Post Office, in the first railway mail car, sorting Pony Express mail as the train sped from St. Joseph to Quincy. With little chance of advancement with the Postal Service, and aware of the surging prosperity of railroads serving the West, Harvey went with the Hannibal and St. Joseph Rail-road, commonly called the "Horrible and Slow Jolting," and eventually joined the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy as Western freight agent with his home and headquarters in Leavenworth, Kansas.

Harvey was a busy man. He had to learn the cattle business as part of his railroad work. Then he bought a ranch, invested in a hotel and sold advertising for the Leavenworth Times and Conservative as a sideline as he traveled the rough rails across a rapidly developing section of the country. Continued page 30

Then There Was the Canyon

First there is the Planet Earth, that terrestrial oblate spheroid spinning its furiously rapid way through the Universe. When we say “furiously rapid” we are not guilty of careless use of exaggeration, considering Earth steps along at a right pert rate of 66,600 miles per hour in its journey of 365 days, 6 hours, 48 minutes and 46 seconds around the Sun. On it we mortals, going along for the merry ride, pursue our own destinies according to our individual beliefs nurtured by the study of tea leaves, palmistry, horoscopy, numerology, crystal gazing, playing card perusal or Divine philosophy.

Earth, as a planet, is strictly minor-league compared to some of the other bodies in the solar system. For us, though, it is the best of all possible worlds. It represents a formidable mass of statistics, a casual perusal of which inspires us to describe it with love and affection in most applicable but unscientific terms as an “old mud ball.” Earth’s surface, we learn, consists of 196,951,072 square miles (we’ll bet the bright lad who came up with that figure never spent much time in the corner wearing a dunce cap). Every seventy of every hundred miles of Earth’s surface are covered by water, leaving land area of Earth (according to our own rusty but trusty abacus) at about 59,085,321 square miles. Come to think of it, our Earth is a rather gooey mud ball!

Despite our zeal to conquer space and learn all there is to know about our spacial neighbors, we are confronted with the realization that there is still much to be learned about the Planet on which we live. Over half the land area of Earth is unmapped and much of it has never been subjected to man’s penetrating and probing curiosity. Much of our Southwest remains to be mapped and we are certain there are nooks and crannies in it of which we know nothing or very little. New worlds to conquer, they say; let’s conquer our own, we respond. Our scientists have not been idle in discovering answers to many of Earth’s secrets. They tell us with exactitude how deep is the deepest ocean, how high the highest mountain, and even how distant it is from the Sun and its starry-eyed neighbors in the Universe. In their studies these learned minds use to advantage methods and means devised by even more learned minds to come up with ever more lucid answers to ever more perplexing questions. Inquisitive man has much to study with!

Then there is the Canyon - the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River, the most revealing chapter in the textbook of Earth’s story. It is a small, almost minute, part of Earth’s nearly sixty million square miles of land surface, but by any yardstick of comparison ranks as the preeminent of Earth’s treasures.

Please turn to page twenty-nine

Then There Was the Canyon

The Grand Canyon begins where the Little Colorado and the Colorado Rivers meet and extends to where the Grand Wash Cliffs maintain brooding surveillance over the waters of Lake Mead - all part and parcel of Northern Arizona. Grand Canyon (measured by the flow of the Colorado River) is 217 miles in length; it is from four to eighteen miles in width with an average width of nine miles. In depth it varies from 5,700 feet, measured vertically at the North Rim, to 4,500 feet at the South Rim, or with an average depth of one mile. (Fancy that! The Grand Canyon has the distinction of being one of the few places on Earth where you can spit a mile without half trying.) Grand Canyon roughly covers 1,953 square miles of Earth's land surface, unquestionably the most spectacular and precious piece of real estate on this Planet. Within the Canyon are Grand Canyon National Park and Grand Canyon National Monument, and, for good measure, the Havasupai Indian Reservation, truly spectacular. The Park, established by Act of Congress and signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson Feb. 26, 1919, is fifty-six miles long and twenty-two miles wide, containing within its boundaries 1,052 square miles. The Monument, adjacent to and west of the Park, covers an area of 310 square miles. The Colorado River, twisting and turning a lot, travels 105 miles through the Park and forty miles through the Monument. Considering Park and Monument measurements, including fairly large Rim segments of the Kanab and Kaibab plateaus to the north and the Coconino plateau to the south, one readily realizes that there is actually a lot of Grand Canyon remaining that has yet to be fully explored and studied. Those who understand rocks and fossils, with most of their studies being made in the Park, tell us here is exposed two billion years of Earth's history. Here one sees the evidence of the tremendous forces that formed Earth's surface in the beginning and the equally tremendous forces that resulted in the cosmic grandeur we marvel at today. To many of us this story is incomprehensible. We understand, though, the Colorado River, hardly more than a small finger of water ten million years ago when it started digging its way to the sea, its tools being its own prodigious strength (during high flood stages July 2 and Sept. 13, 1937, it carried a daily load of 27,000,000 tons of silt, which is a lot of mud), its own relentless fury and irresistible might and indomitable power and adamant majesty aided and abetted by all the sharp teeth of Time and Weather (erosion is the word they use) to form the grandest canyon of them all.

Those who understand rocks and fossils, with most of their studies being made in the Park, tell us here is exposed two billion years of Earth's history. Here one sees the evidence of the tremendous forces that formed Earth's surface in the beginning and the equally tremendous forces that resulted in the cosmic grandeur we marvel at today. To many of us this story is incomprehensible. We understand, though, the Colorado River, hardly more than a small finger of water ten million years ago when it started digging its way to the sea, its tools being its own prodigious strength (during high flood stages July 2 and Sept. 13, 1937, it carried a daily load of 27,000,000 tons of silt, which is a lot of mud), its own relentless fury and irresistible might and indomitable power and adamant majesty aided and abetted by all the sharp teeth of Time and Weather (erosion is the word they use) to form the grandest canyon of them all.

The portion of Earth's surface we call the Grand Canyon has withstood a lot in its time. How it has survived under the barrage of adjectives hurled at it by countless inspired and uninspired writers trying to describe it is hard to understand. Captain Clarence E. Dutton said it best when he wrote about the Grand Canyon in a government report 'way back in 1882: "It is not to be comprehended in a day or a week, not even in a month. It must be dwelt upon and studied, and the study must comprise the slow acquisition of the meaning and spirit of that marvelous scenery."... R.C.

Fred Harvey

On these trips he came face-to-face with the frightful conditions which existed in ill-equipped, poorly operated, crooked restaurants which the traveling public had to depend on. Bitter coffee, greasy food, poor service, high prices made up the bill-of-fare along the line. Added to this was the shameful practice of trainmen who sold tickets in advance for meals, then blew the whistle before the passengers could eat. The trainmen got a cut and the food was saved and served over again. Fred Harvey, who had developed into an epicure and enjoyed good food served in good style, missed many meals on the road. Then and there the spark was kindled that fired his determination to do something about it. As a starter, he and a partner, Jeff Rice, operated three widely separated restaurants along the Kansas Pacific Railroad Line. The venture was successful but they parted. Rice did not see eye-to-eye with Harvey, who envisioned a grand network of restaurants bringing good food and superior service in attractive surroundings to the ever increasing number of travelers. They split the cash and Harvey started looking for greener fields.

Fred Harvey, who had developed into an epicure and enjoyed good food served in good style, missed many meals on the road. Then and there the spark was kindled that fired his determination to do something about it. As a starter, he and a partner, Jeff Rice, operated three widely separated restaurants along the Kansas Pacific Railroad Line. The venture was successful but they parted. Rice did not see eye-to-eye with Harvey, who envisioned a grand network of restaurants bringing good food and superior service in attractive surroundings to the ever increasing number of travelers. They split the cash and Harvey started looking for greener fields.

Although he put up a good sales talk to the Burlington officials, they couldn't see getting mixed up with restaurants and suggested he try the Santa Fe. When Harvey approached Superintendent Charles F. Morse of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe he found a man who shared his ideas about food and service and received a “green light” to go ahead.

In the spring of 1876, the first Harvey House was born when he bought Peter Kline's lunchroom in the Santa Fe's Topeka, Kansas depot. It was closed for two days for a thorough going over, then opened with fresh tablecloths, napkins, polished silver and excellent food. It was an immediate success as passengers, trainmen and townfolk flocked in to build it up to capacity business.

The Harvey recipe for a successful operation included these essential ingredients, all blended together harmoniously: a ready market, an above level establishment, good, out-ofthe-ordinary food, pleasant, efficient service and reasonable charges. Add to these an agreement with the Santa Fe which would supply the buildings, coal, ice and water, transport Harvey furnishings, food, supplies, and personnel without charge, and allow all profits to go to Fred Harvey. Thus a potentially vast enterprise was launched along the rails to a land of promise.

Next the Santa Fe-Fred Harvey combination decided to buy out a rundown hotel in Florence, Kansas and make it over. Fred and Sarah Harvey replaced the old furniture with attractive walnut pieces, put in new mattresses and springs, modern kitchen ware, stocked the dining room with Sheffield silver and Irish linens and hired a chef from Chicago's Palmer House.

The chef's thoughts on food fell right in line with Fred Harvey's and he obtained fresh meat, vegetables, eggs, butter and wild game from local farmers. Such delicacies as prairie chickens were bought for a dollar a dozen, quail at seventyfive cents a dozen and butter a dime a pound. Through the touch of a master chef, signed up at a salary of $5,000 a year, the Harvey House meals quickly gained fame along the line as travelers began staying overnight.

With the second link in the chain firmly in place the Harvey System began to spread. From a meager beginning, Fred Harvey soon proved himself and his theories as he put on a full head of steam to provide good eating establishments along the steadily growing Santa Fe and some of its connecting lines. The Fred Harvey Public Relations Office puts it this way: “During the 1880's and the 1890's Fred Harvey's unique restaurants and hotels, Harvey Houses they were called, opened one after another every 100 miles along the Santa Fe through Kansas, Colorado, Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico to Arizona and California.” This was necessary, it is said, “to keep western traffic from settling in one place where Fred Harvey served his incomparable meals.” Arizona in the early days had five Harvey Houses at Winslow, Williams, Ash Fork, Seligman and Kingman.

It was in this period that Fred Harvey went all out and saw his dream come true with the building of his truly fine hotels in the West. Designed in Territorial, Spanish style and christened with romantic Spanish names the Castañeda, El Ortiz, Alvarado, Fray Marcos, El Navajo and La Posada they became meeting places for world-travelers and local residents and provided an atmosphere that lifted up the social status of the towns in which they were built.

In Masked Gods, printed by the University of New Mexico Press, Frank Waters appropriately describes them as the only true inns and in western tradition: “With their long portales and intimate patios, their floors covered with Navajo blankets, their walls hung with Spanish Santos and retablos or painted with mural reproductions of Navajo sandpaintings, their great fireplaces smoking with piñon their newsstands full of the finest books, photographs and monographs of the region, their curio cases of Navajo and Zuni jewelry, Pueblo pottery and Apache baskets their tidy horseshoe counter lunch rooms fragrant with the best coffee in the West their hotel rooms with their cool, clean beds the Harvey House was not only a haven in the wilderness, but an institution that had no parallel in America. Perhaps more than any single organization, the Fred Harvey system introduced America to Americans.” Key factor in enabling the Harvey Houses to provide passengers with ample time to enjoy good food through efficient

Dec. 12 1911 MENU DeLuxe

Efficient service was an alert system set up by the railroad. Long before mealtime, as a train sped across country, a brakeman canvassed the passengers and tallied up the numbers of those wanting dining room or counter service, then wired the information ahead to the next meal stop.

A uniformed Harvey attendant stationed on the platform struck a gong when he heard the engine whistle a mile away. This stirred up coordinated action inside as waitresses hurried to put the first course on the tables and counter. As the train pulled to a stop and passengers dashed on to the platform, the gong was sounded several times to direct them to the dining room. Fred Harvey stressed neatness and cleanliness, and the rule of the house was that all dining room patrons had to wear coats. Any man not wearing one was offered an alpaca coat, and waitresses had orders not to serve anyone without a coat.

Waitresses were at their stations and steak and eggs were cooking on the grill as the patrons ate their mush or fruit. Orders were taken for coffee, tea or milk and the cups placed in a “code” position for the “drink girl” to pour just what had been ordered. A big feature was for the manager himself to bring in the huge platter of sizzling steaks for all to see.

It is hard to believe, today, but here's the breakfast that Harvey House patrons before the turn of the century got for fifty cents: cereal or fruit, eggs riding atop thick, juicy steaks with hash brown potatoes on the side and a stack of six large hotcakes swimming in butter and maple syrup, topped off with apple pie and coffee.

Dinner menus for seventy-five cents were amazing and always with a fancy gourmet dish or wild game and served with a smile by the Harvey Girls.

To keep up with the increasing demand, Harvey Girls were recruited from good homes in the East through newspaper advertisements which read, "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." Girls were prompted to go west by a spirit of adventure plus a hope for romance. They lived in dormitories supervised by kindly house-mothers, just like students in boarding schools. On the job, the girls were issued trim black skirts, shirtwaists, stockings, shoes and ties along with the high, white bib aprons. They made a pretty sight for tired eyes of cowboys and railroad men just in from a bout with foul weather.

The Harvey Girls brought culture, refinement and romance with them, and certainly played a part in the taming of the West. It is believed that those who married ranchers, cowboys, miners, merchants and railroad men, to found many first-families of the West, might easily number 20,000. This turnover of essential help did not pose much of a problem for the Harvey system, since there was always a long waiting list and the newcomers were carried free by the Santa Fe.

With the rapid expansion and development of the West, there was a rising demand for speed and more speed in transportation towards the end of the nineteenth century. While the Harvey Houses had been a boon to the Santa Fe, the long stops for leisurely meals now proved an obstacle in keeping ahead of competition. Thus, in 1890, came the age of dining cars attached to fast trains.

Logically Fred Harvey was the one best equipped with know-how and well-established facilities for procurement and distribution to handle this new job. As expected, the Harvey touch produced a quality service that put the Santa Fe way out front in popularity for deluxe western dining on the rails. Nowhere in the country were better meals served, all with the Harvey tradition that "the best of everything was none too good for the Santa Fe's patrons." The crack California Limited which carried the same dining car from Chicago to California was typical of this luxurious innovation. When you take a look at an 1888 menu, the seventy-five cent dinners seem like fantastic bargains. One might have such delicacies as littleneck clams on the half shell, consomme printaniére royale, filet mignon, broiled plover on toast, strawberries and cream, Edam cheese and French coffee.

When Fred Harvey died, in 1901, at the age of sixty-six, he and the Santa Fe system were credited with owning and operating fifteen hotels, forty-seven restaurants, dining cars and a food service on the San Francisco Bay Ferry. This unique, prosperous business, built up from an obscure beginning in a shaggy frontier town, passed on to his sons, Ford and Byron, already holding key positions in an intricate, smooth-running organization. As time went on his sons steadfastly continued the operational policies which had been instilled in them by their father. The brothers were well-equipped to meet the challenge and change the pattern to fit the sophisticated requirements of the motor and air-travel age, just as Fred Harvey was able to add dining-car service when rail-side meal stops were outmoded for through passengers.

No doubt nomadic Indians toured the Grand Canyon, and they might have slept in rock shelters of wickiups between trips along the rim. History tells us that the first white man to see the Canyon was a member of the Francisco Vasquez Coronado's expedition. He reported its width across to be from three to four hundred leagues and that there was no passage down to the river. In 1869 John Wesley Powell viewed the full majesty of the Canyon during his daring boat trip down the Colorado. Then numerous adventurers, pioneers, trappers, miners and cattlemen traveled by horseback and wagons to see this incredible canyon and spread the news of what they saw.

Soon, stages were taking tourists from Williams to the Grand Canyon. There was a small inn near the Rim where they could rest, eat and sleep. With its trains already running across Northern Arizona, the Santa Fe, in 1887, built one of its fine hotels, the Fray Marcos, at Williams. From this point an increasing number of travelers took the regular tourist stage trip to see the Canyon and, after the long, jolting, round-trip ride, enjoyed the comforts of the Fray Marcos operated by Fred Harvey, of course.

Rich mineral deposits were being worked at Anita, about forty-four miles north of Williams. Progress was slow, since the ore was moved by wagons to the railhead. A railroad spur was needed, and the Chicago investors built a line to Anita and eight miles beyond by July, 1901, then went broke. The Santa Fe's Edward P. Ripley, who had been welding its vast system together by acquiring connecting lines, bought the miner's interests and extended the track all the way to the Grand Canyon, making it possible to bring its coaches and Pullman cars right up to the South Rim.

The Santa Fe built El Tovar Hotel with Arizona boulders and Oregon pine logs in the characteristic style already agreed on by the Harvey-Santa Fe combination. It had one hundred rooms and not a single private bath. Reservations were necessary to use the public baths located on each of the four floors, and a small fee was charged. Since all the water used at the Grand Canyon was hauled in Santa Fe tank cars from the Del Rio Ranch, a hundred and twenty miles away, this would seem to be quite reasonable. Today, however, a progressive remodeling program offers fewer rooms, which include suites and private baths.

"The best of everything for Harvey patrons" is still the byword away from the rails and cow town frontiers.

When El Tovar, the "showplace of the West," opened January 14, 1905, Fred Harvey was not there but his spirit and his traditions were, as son Ford Harvey, who was then head of the company, took over the operation of the hotel and all other Santa Fe facilities there.

Travel picked up quickly as Grand Canyon was getting a lot of publicity through the efforts of the Santa Fe. In addition to knowing how to keep a railroad running, Ripley had an astute sense of promotion. He found a remarkable painting of the Canyon by Thomas Moran, bought it and had several thousand full-color lithographs made from it. These were framed and given to schools, offices, homes, railroad stations and hotels throughout the United States.

Following his artistic hunch, scores of artists were invited to be his guests at the Hopi House and encouraged to stay as long as they liked, to put their own impressions of the Canyon on canvas. It is said that perhaps half of the paintings of the Grand Canyon hanging here and there today are the direct result of this subsidy.

The Grand Canyon's fame spread around the world, and it became the Number One scenic attraction in the United States. Bright Angel Lodge was developed to provide comfortable, but less expensive accommodations. With throughPullman cars taking their passengers right up to the front door of the Canyon, business boomed for the Santa Fe. During the rush season it was an ordinary sight to see six full-length, allPullman trains parked side by side at the terminus of the line. Now, that has all gone by by the board, as private automobiles bring the far greater number of tourists to the Grand Canyon National Park. In 1919, 44,000 tourists entered the Park practically all by train while the 1967 record shows that 1,800,000 entered the Park, and only a handful came by train.

As motor travel increased, the Grand Canyon Motor Lodge, with cabins, housekeeping units and a cafeteria, has been enlarged. Yavapai Lodge, a modern motel, was built, then added to in 1962. Bright Angel Lodge has just completed fifty-three motel-type rooms facing the Canyon. Altogether today there are 618 rooms and suites which can accommodate 2,163 guests. The management and operation staff is approximately 750 persons. All the Harvey accommodations on the South Rim stay open the year round. During the busiest summer months, over 16,000 pounds of meat, poultry, fish, butter and cheeses are shipped in weekly for the various kitchens; 373,175 pieces of linen go through the laundry each month; and Harvey girls are busy folding two thousand dinner napkins a day "to keep the tourists happy, the Fred Harvey way."

As the rail-side "eating houses" were outmoded by elite dining car service, some links in the Harvey chain were dropped, but the acquisition of tourist resorts, fine restaurants in major cities and recreation areas put new links into the chain which faithfully continues the Fred Harvey tradition of excellence. Operating at more than fifty locations in nine stares, Fred Harvey In the beginning, horse-drawn coaches took tourists to points of interest along the Rim. These were replaced with open motor buses (dusters required) and later with superbuses which took sightseers even into the Indian country. Mule-back trips down into the canyon were begun in 1905, and the trails in use now are those originally cut out by Indians and prospectors in the last century. To extend these trips, Phantom Ranch was set up on the floor of the canyon for those who rode all the way down in the popular mule train. In ten years, 79,000 made one-day trips and 21,000 went all the way.

Fred Harvey purchased all the Santa Fe's Grand Canyon facilities in 1954. Since then, nearly two million dollars have Harvey can sleep over 4,500 guests in hotels and seat 12,600 diners in restaurants as it does over a forty-million-dollar gross business today.

During his time, when his Harvey Houses played host to thousands of celebrities, national and international figures, many took time to praise his service and meals. In an editorial in his EMPORIA GAZETTE, William Allen White, the "Sage of Emporia," expressed his feeling about Harvey House food emphatically. He wrote, "It is the best in America. Deponent has in the past six months eaten meals on ten of the great railway systems of the country. Harvey meals are so much better than the meals on other railroads east, west, north and south that the comparison seems trite."

Elbert Hubbard heaped more praise on the man as well as his meals in his eulogy which ends, "Fred Harvey is dead, but his spirit still lives. The standard of excellence he set can never go back. He has been a civilizer and a benefactor. He has added to the physical, mental and spiritual welfare of millions I take off my hat to Fred Harvey, who served the patrons of the Santa Fe so faithfully and well, that dying, he yet lives, his name a symbol of all that is honest, excellent, hygienic, beautiful and useful."