Nice review of the book on Texasmonthly.com reminds me that many people don’t know the Texas version of the Fred Harvey and Harvey Girl saga. Fred came to Texas later than the rest of the Southwest, beginning in the 1890s when the company took over the eating houses and dining cars on the Frisco and the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe, which meant there were Harvey locations in (in alphabetical order) Amarillo, Brownwood, Canadian, Cleburne, Dallas, El Paso, Fort Worth, Gainesville, Galveston, Houston. Kingsville, Panhandle, Paris, Rosenberg, Silsbee, Slaton, Somerville, Sweetwater and Temple (where the company not only had restaurants and a hotel, but a huge dairy farm that served Texas and Oklahoma locations.)

Here’s a rare photo of Texas Harvey Girls in Somerville, where Fred Harvey had a depot hotel, dining room, lunchroom and newsstand from 1901 to 1940.

from the collection of Gordon Chappell

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