About the Collection
are a subset of the items contained in the U.S. West: Photographs, Manuscripts, and Imprints digital collection, focusing on promotional booklets, postcards, and ephemera that used Native North American imagery to promote travel to the Southwest. The materials were published between 1901, when the Fred Harvey Indian Department first opened, and 1930, when the Indian Detours business was sold. These materials encouraged travel to the Southwest, increasing demands for souvenirs in the form of blankets, pottery, and jewelry on display at Harvey locations.
Some of the materials were , Ph.D. Her dissertation, “Waiting, Working, and Writing Women in the Southwest, 1883-1939,” includes research on the Fred Harvey Co., its symbiotic relationship with the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway (AT&SF), and its impact on the growth of tourism and commercialization of Native North American arts and crafts. Johnston's annotations are in the Description field of the metadata.
About the Fred Harvey Co.
British immigrant Fred Harvey approached the AT&SF in 1875 with an idea to open trackside eating houses along its expanding line. The novelty of serving fresh food appealed to the AT&SF, which was looking to fund the line’s expansion to the Pacific Coast.
In 1876, the first Harvey House opened in Topeka, Kansas, to instant success. “Meals by Fred Harvey” became the slogan by which the small railway competed for transcontinental business. Through the 1930s, the AT&SF funded Harvey ventures throughout Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and California, ranging from lunch counters to railway newsstands to luxury hotels.
Fred Harvey Co. and Native North Americans
Fred Harvey died in 1901, leaving the chain to his son Ford. His sister Minnie and her husband John Huckel encouraged Ford to incorporate Native North American arts and culture to attract travelers to New Mexico and Arizona-based Harvey locations. They established the Fred Harvey Indian Department in 1901, which hired indigenous artist-demonstrators to weave blankets and make pottery and jewelry in an annex of the grand Alvarado Hotel in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Native North American artisans became central to Harvey and the AT&SF’s advertising. In 1905 they opened Hopi House, advertised as a replica of a Hopi dwelling. At the El Tovar Hotel at the Grand Canyon, “Harvey Indians” made crafts as tourists looked on. The companies began offering Indian Detours in 1926, taking passengers in private Harvey Cars to see beyond the artist demonstrations.