The Harvey Girls

The Harvey Girls Legendary Ladies of the West

The Harvey Girls. Somehow the name suggests a bouquet of lovely young women like those created with pen and ink by Charles Dana Gibson in the two decades before the turn of the last century. But the Harvey Girls, who made their debut as waitresses at El Tovar and other Harvey House restaurants along the route of the Santa Fe railroad, were no paper dolls.

Although they were pretty, too, they were real and they endured into the 20th century as well as into legend. Actually, they had to play down their beauty, but it must have shone through because they have been romanticized in prose, poetry, and even a movie and always as beautiful women.

Certainly those young ladies must have had a strong spirit of adventure to come out to work in the wild and woolly West of the late 19th century. But come out they did, by the thousands. One estimate is that more than 20,000 young women from places like Kansas City, Chicago, New York, Boston, and Philadelphia became Harvey Girls and went west to seek their fortunes.

The reason there were so many was that there was such a high turnover and the reason for the high turnover was that so many of them quit to marry miners, ranchers, men from all walks of life. They founded the West's first families.

Some said their boss, Fred Harvey, the English-born entrepreneur of the food business, might as well have set up a matrimonial bureau because so many of his employees left his hire to “get hitched.” Despite a requirement that each Harvey Girl sign a one-year contract, in which she agreed not to marry before the end of that period, the turnover still was tremendous. The very qualities Harvey sought in his employees seemed to be the same ones men wanted in their wives.

Girls who made it through the first six months without Cupid interfering were congratulated personally by Harvey, and often they would continue for another year or more with the restaurant chain.

Nevertheless, proposals must have been routine events in their daily lives, and many a man was moved to wax poetic over the young girls, as was John Moore, writing in the Amarillo Globe. “... All dressed in spotless linen, her hair all in a curl, so purely sweetly winning, is the happy Harvey Girl.” Recruiting advertisements in Eastern newspapers called for “Young women of good character, attractive and intelligent, 18 to 30.” No experience was required. A special training corps of Harvey employees taught the girls personal grooming and drilled them to perfection on how to set a table and serve food with a touch of elegance.

One of the most important tableside maneuvers they learned was the famous Harvey “code” for arranging cups for beverages. The young woman who took the orders surreptitiously arranged cups to indicate different customer choices. The girl who followed unerringly poured the right beverage into the right cup without asking a single question, suggesting a touch of clairvoyance to the patrons.

The requirement of “good character” meant just that with Fred Harvey. While some young women might have joined his staff to get away from heavy authority at home, they soon found they had to live with a matron who also had a rigid set of rules. At El Tovar and other Harvey operations, matrons were older employees who had come up the corporate ladder. Like top sergeants, they inspected their recruits' dress and general appearance. And they made sure they observed the 10 p.m. curfew, which was lifted only on the most special occasions.

The Harvey Girl uniform certainly should have done nothing to inflame men's passions. It was a black dress that buttoned high up the neck and had a white collar. They were allowed a white hair ribbon, but no fancy hairdos or makeup. Their shoes were black, too.

But obviously this didn't deter their many suitors, and their very presence must have had a powerful effect on them.

At El Tovar, as well as at other Harvey installations, the girls continued to meet, fall in love with, and marry the men they served in the dining rooms and the lunch counters.

It has been reported that something like 4000 male infants born of these marriages were named either Fred or Harvey or both, in honor of the famous restaurateur, and many of the biggest names in the West can trace their lineage to a Harvey Girl. The early training in manners and social graces that these young women received in their homes in the East, and the experience they had at meeting the public as Harvey Girls served them well in later life as hostesses and grande dames of the manor.

As their husbands tamed the West and carved out empires in a rugged, beautiful land, their Harvey Girl wives marched beside them every step of the way.

by Dennis B. Farrell

Lacked in bathrooms, it made up for in other conveniences that were considered luxuries at the turn of the century. Hot and cold water, steam heat, and electric lights were amenities not found in other hotels in the West and quite a few back East.

They used the native rock that abounds in the area for the massive foundations, but imported the huge Douglas fir logs from Oregon even though apparently suitable stands of fir grew within easy hauling distance.

The roughly-hewn logs and planks were carried by train from Oregon to the South Rim. Most of the wood is still visible, for it makes up the exterior, the flooring, walls, and part of the inside finish.

The place cost $250,000, and Whittlesey used part of the money to stain the exterior logs and wooden shingles to further blend them into the surroundings.

When the Grand Canyon hotel was still on the drawing boards, it wasn't called El Tovar. Six names were actually under discussion: Cardenas, Bright Angel Tavern, Tusayan, Marcos de Niza, and Tobar. El Tovar, the final selection, was proposed by M.J. Riordan of Flagstaff, in a letter to A.G. Wells, general manager of the Santa Fe, dated October 28, 1903.

There's a minor flaw in the romanticism, however. The place is named after Don Pedro de Tovar, one of Coronado's top men. Tovar was looking around for the gold that was supposed to be in Arizona, and while digging in what is now the Hopi Reservation, he heard tales of a huge canyon with walls that rose to the sky and a ferocious white river.

Tovar sent word back to Coronado, who sent an expedition to look it over. The leader of that group was Don Garcia Lopez de Cardenas, and it was he who is credited with discovering the Grand Canyon. But the hotel-namers ignored that fact and went for El Tovar, perhaps because the literal translation is supposed to be “the man on the shore.” Once the hotel was built, the Santa Fe had to get people to stay in it.

That wasn't hard, once Edward P. Ripley got into the act.

Ripley, one of the Santa Fe higherups, had been welding the railroad's vast system together by acquiring connecting lines. Shortly after the turn of the century, he bought a railroad spur built near Williams as part of a mining operation that went broke. He extended the spur all the way to the South Rim, making it possible for the Santa Fe to transport guests to within walking distance of El Tovar's sprawling front porch.

Then Ripley set out to market the Grand Canyon, a move which he figured would keep El Tovar full. He found a remarkable painting of the Canyon by Thomas Moran, bought it, had several thousand full-color lithographs made from it, had them framed and gave them to schools, offices, homes, railroad stations, and hotels.

In another stroke of early-day public relations genius, Ripley invited scores of artists to stay at the hotel as his guests for as long as they liked, correctly assuming that their work would concentrate on the grandeur of the Canyon. Photographer Karl Moon came to the Canyon under the same circumstances, the Kolb brothers came on their own, and all of them spread the pictorial praises of the Canyon, which in turn kept the El Tovar reservations clerks busy.

They still are, even though it's 76 years later.

And El Tovar, now an historical landmark, has borne up well under the traffic.

It has withstood changing architectural styles because it was built to look rustic and has maintained that appearance through three-quarters of a century with no noticeable adjustments.

There has been periodical modernization to make the hotel more convenient and to comply with fire codes, but never at the expense of structural purity.

In other words, none of the logs has been replaced with plastic. And there are no television sets in the rooms.

Of course, there have been some changes. When El Tovar opened, one of the suites cost $8 per day. Today's top price for the suite is near $100. Meals back then cost $1 for breakfast and lunch, $1.50 for dinner. It's at least four times that now, and one item on the menu steak and lobster takes $24 out of a vacationer's wallet.But rooms are booked six months in advance.

When the hotel opened, it was described as “a little village devoted to the entertainment of travelers.” And though prices change and more than 2 million tourists per year come to gawk at and take pictures of the Grand Canyon and the things around it, El Tovar's charm remains constant.

The floors still creak and if there's a wind hanging around outside, it whispers into every room.

Tall walls in narrow halls are rambling passageways to sitting places and thinking places and looking places. “What wonder that every morning and evening most of the guests gather in the Rendezvous the ladies to read and gossip; the gentlemen to smoke and tell of their latest adventures,” read the hotel's first brochure. And, although the habits of the guests have been altered, the Rendezvous room hasn't. It is 41-by-37-feet of nostalgia, notable for uneven walls of dark-stained logs and bulky rafters that convey an atmosphere of comfort in a big country clubhouse.

Off the western edge of the Rendezvous, the Rotunda beckons the wide of eye and the curious as it rises through a wooden-encircled balcony beyond the second floor.

The dining room's huge fireplace is the major accent, but it does not overshadow the Fred Harvey basics clean silverware, fresh tablecloths, and good food. Tradition, once established and proven successful, remains.

Outside, the sun completes its arch and casts its farewell.

The pastels of the dawn are now the earth tones of the evening, and they stretch long arms of amber and tan across the Canyon.

And as its final gesture, the sun repaints the Canyon, this time in blue.

And the day is over.