“In this superbly written and rigorously researched saga of American business, family, and food, Fried takes hold of history and, as Hampton Sides did in his Blood and Thunder: The Epic Story of Kit Carson and the American West, makes it live and breathe.”

just one highlight of a wonderful review in New Mexico magazine by Tom Clagett

Appetite for America: How Visionary Businessman Fred Harvey Built a Railroad Hospitality Empire that Civilized the Wild West
By Stephen Fried
Bantam Books
544 pages, hardcover, $27

Stories of the taming of the West usually involve tough sheriffs, six-guns, and the U.S. Cavalry, not cozy restaurants offering fresh bread, friendly service, and waitresses in white aprons. However, those latter elements played an important role in building the West: British-born immigrant Fred Harvey, a railroad ticket agent, brought culinary hospitality west of the Mississippi River, helped establish New Mexico as a tourism haven, and made Arizona’s Grand Canyon one of the most visited national parks in the country—all because, in 1876, he opened the first restaurant chain. Before McDonald’s and Dairy Queen, there was the Harvey House.

In this superbly written and rigorously researched saga of American business, family, and food, Fried takes hold of history and, as Hampton Sides did in his Blood and Thunder: The Epic Story of Kit Carson and the American West (Doubleday, 2006), makes it live and breathe.Appetite for America

Disgusted by the ghastly meals and horrid service at the eating houses along the U.S. railroad lines of the 1870s, Harvey was certain he could provide “the finest cuisine along the tracks in the middle of nowhere.” The upstart Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway welcomed Harvey’s venture, and soon Harvey Houses stretched from Topeka, Kansas, to Bakersfield, California.

Author Stephen Fried states that the New Mexico Territory proved difficult for Harvey; residents in such towns as Deming, Las Vegas, and Ratón resented the railroad, as well as Harvey’s dress code, which required male diners to wear jackets. They didn’t care for the European chefs Harvey imported, either. When one cowboy saw the pink interior of his first rare steak, he “didn’t know whether to eat it or brand it.” Then a friend of Harvey’s suggested the idea of waitresses, to make “those cowboys more gentlemanly.” The Harvey Girls quickly became “the predominant daydream of men in the West.”

In a story filled with surprises, one of the most significant is that Fred Harvey dies halfway through. But as first Harvey’s son, and then his grandson, take charge of the company (which by then included chain hotels and chain bookstores), and as America evolves, the Harvey legacy of customer service remains firm through two world wars, the Roaring Twenties, and particularly the Depression, during which Harvey Houses serve free meals to anyone who asks. By the 1960s, though, blunted prospects and business fears have soured the Harvey recipe for success.

The author peppers the book with fascinating tidbits: Each Harvey House baked and hand-sliced its own bread to the thickness mandated by Harvey: precisely three-eighths of an inch. Aviator Charles Lindbergh, who’d flown the Spirit of St. Louis solo across the Atlantic Ocean, joined Harvey’s grandson Freddy, a flying enthusiast, in establishing the first cross-country air and rail service. And in 1926, Harvey’s company inaugurated auto tours to New Mexico’s pueblos, called Indian Detours, operating them out of its latest acquisition, La Fonda in Santa Fe, and benefiting from the newly opened Route 66, which passed within a block of La Fonda’s doors.

Richly illustrated with photographs, Appetite for America also includes recipes from the Harvey House cookbooks, including their signature Little Orange Pancakes.

Tom Clagett, a member of the Western Writers of America, lives in Santa Fe.

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