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English born Fred Harvey learned the basics of good food service from a lowly station in a New York restaurant and later ran a successful cafe prior to the Civil War before entering the employ of the US railroads. Working first for the Hannibal and St Joseph Railroad and later others, Harvey was required to travel a great deal as a railroad agent. This gave him first-hand experience of how dismal railroad food and service was.
🔺 Frederick Henry Harvey (Photo: Wall Street Journal)
This was no secret to regular passengers, before Harvey came along, the railroads were serviced by local rough eateries or unscrupulous restaurant owners who would reheat the leftover dishes and serve them again as supposedly new to the next, unsuspecting train-load of hungry passengers. Some travellers wary of the dubious quality offered up, would bring their own ‘shoebox’ lunches of fried chicken and hard-boiled eggs but this didn’t prove a satisfactory alternative – after sitting in the train for a couple of days the food from home would quickly go off [‘Fred Harvey and the Harvey Girls: A Dollar, a Dream and a Dinner’, (John Koster) Historynet, www.historynet.com].
Business-savvy Harvey sensed there was a gap in the market and in 1876 he clinched a deal with the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad (AT&SF)ⓐ to open eating houses along the railroad. The start was modest, one small lunchroom in the Topeka (Kansas) depot of the railroad. But from these modest beginnings Harvey created a thriving railway hospitality concern and more. The prototype Harvey lunchroom has been described as “the progenitor of what (Americans) think of today as a diner” [Stephen Fried, quoted in ‘Tracing the Recipes of America’s First Restaurant Empire’, (Sara Bonisteel), Epicurious, 18-Jun-2013, www.epicurious.com].
🔺 Santa Fe railroad & Harvey hotels & dining stations
The beginnings of fast food
The key to Harvey’s success was quality of food and speed of delivery. Once the network of Harvey dining-rooms were established along the Santa Fe route, the operations were streamlined to work like clockwork…and they needed to. As the trains pulled into the stations Fred Harvey staff had 20, at most 30 minutes to feed 60 to 100 passengers. This required coordination between the train conductor and Harvey staff (to give the staff advanced warning of their impending arrival). To meet the short turnaround time, the waiting staff (“Harvey Girls”) utilised a unique signalling system, the waitress taking the order would send a signal to a second waitress, a cup turned upright on the saucer meant coffee, a cup facing down, tea. The second waitress could then immediately do that part of the order without having to wait for her colleague to return with the order [‘Watch the Cup, Please’, (Jann Bommerbach), True West, 04-Nov-2015, www.truewestmagazine.com].
🔻 Harvey’s El Tovar Hotel, Grand Canyon
No “mean cuisine”
Harvey Houses (as they eventually came to be known) were no “Greasy Joe’s”. From the start Harvey headhunted a star head chef from back east for his first restaurant. The chef prepared top-quality cuisine for AT&SF line passengers…the food was so good that travelling salesmen and other regular travellers chose the AT&SF on that basis over rival western railroads (Koster). They were getting quality food, fresh and affordable to the middle class traveller, served on spotless Blue China with white linen tablecloths [‘Classic Harvey House recipes’, 23-Feb-2019, CBS News, www.cbsnews.com/].
Value as well as quality for money
In 1888 Fred Harvey debuted the first Fred Harvey dining-car on the Chicago to Kansas City train service. The menu for the service illustrates what a bargain it was – for the middle class—for 75¢ passengers got a mains (choice of oysters, lobster, salmon roast beef or other meats) plus dessert—often prepared by world-class chefs (Koster).
🔺 Castãneda Hotel, Las Vegas, (the ‘other’ Las Vegas – in New Mexico): the first trackside Harvey House (Image: www.castanedahotel.com]
The Harvey dining empire
How extensive was the Harvey House network? At the onset Fred Harvey promises a depot restaurant every 100 miles between Kansas and California. At the Harvey high-point there was 25 Harvey hotels, 40 sit-down dining-rooms and 55 lunchrooms on the route (Koster), and the Harvey House concept was extended to other west-bound railroads. Harvey was a natural marketer coming up with advertising campaigns like “3,000 Miles of Hospitality” to promote tourism in the region [‘Fred Harvey—Branding the Southwest (Quality Fast Food)’, www.lib.nau.edu].
The Harvey girls’ uniform: looking a bit too similar to a WWI nurse’s outfit or something you might see in a nunnery! 🔻(Photo: Grand Canyon Railway and Hotel)
The Harvey Girls: Helping to civilise the “Wild West”
Because the male waiters employed by Harvey had a tendency toward drinking on the job and causing trouble in the houses, the entrepreneur in 1883 had the inspired idea of replacing them with single women (aged 18-30) shipped out from the East. The Harvey Girls (as they became known) were attired in demure, conservative feminine uniforms and required to not marry before they had completed six months of service. The women waitresses on the job set standards for cleanliness and decorum which had “a civilizing effect on the often rough customers in the territories” [‘Fred Harvey, the Harvey Houses, and the Harvey Girls’, https://abqlibrary.org/railroads/HarveyHouses]. Many Harvey Girls stayed in the West after their employment, often marrying their bachelor customers, earning the railroad restaurants the sobriquet of “Cupid on Rails”ⓑ.
Farm-to-table: “Meals by Fred Harvey”
Fred Harvey Co (FHC) entered into contracts with local purveyors to ensure fresh ingredients for his meals. Fred Harvey Co also went into the farming business itself,running it’s own dairy and cattle farms (‘Fred Harvey—Branding the Southwest (Quality Fast Food).
(Photo: www.railroadmemories.com)
Business diversification: Whisky, chocolates, gifts, etc.
With success and fame came more diversification. FHC eventually manufactured it’s own whisky, sold it’s own brand of chocolates, candy, ice cream, salad dressings, as well as take-home gifts and souvenirs to passengers. Harvey’s knack for marketing put the brand everywhere. FHC gave away cookbooks of Fred Harvey recipes (‘Branding the Southwest’). The Harvey Co, as part of the tourism package it was promoting, also entered the postcard publishing field…through the Detroit Publishing Co it produced the very popular Fred Harvey Arizona ‘Phototint’ series of cards [‘Fred Harvey (entrepreneur), The Full Wiki, www.the full wiki.org/].
🔺 Menu image from the Santa Fe dining-car (Source: www.lib.nau.edu)
Menu art of the Southwest
The railroad menus of FHC are an interesting sidelight of the company, delightfully quaint in their great diversity. Many celebrated in colourful imagery the beauty of the American Southwest or the pre-United States connexions to the region of colonial Spanish missionaries and Native American tribes (see below ‘Marketing an image of the Southwest’). The menu artwork was often of a high calibre, eg, William Deane Fausett’s humorous images. Menus like the company’s La Posada menu were instructional – including an US warplane ID chart for US servicemen using the AT&SF rail during WWII. There were menus for special occasions like Mother‘s Day and special menus for kids which doubled as clown masks (‘Branding the Southwest’).
Marketing an image of the Southwest
Fred Harvey invented a new hospitality service for railway passengers, but he also invented (and marketed) a particular image of the country’s Southwest for Americans. Harvey, together with the AT&SF Railroad, changed the perception of Americans, filling the vast unknown void of savage desert with a new, “compelling regional identity for the Great Southwest of northern New Mexico and Arizona”. The Harvey corporation “appropriated and marketed the cultures of Native Americans”ⓒ presenting them as “colourful, tamed native peoples”. Harvey to a lesser extent also did a inventive reconstruction of the cultural impact of Spanish colonial and early Anglo-Celtic settlers. Weigle suggests that FMC’s commercial innovations such as the Indian Detours program (affording railroad passengers the opportunity to visit local native communities, represented a kind of ‘Disneyfication’ of the region [Weigle, Marta. “From Desert to Disney World: The Santa Fe Railway and the Fred Harvey Company Display the Indian Southwest.” Journal of Anthropological Research, vol. 45, no. 1, 1989, pp. 115-137. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3630174. Accessed 12 Feb. 2020].
Endnote: Founder Fred died in 1901 but the business remained in the family until his grandson died in 1965. In 1968 FHC and Harvey Houses were purchased by Amfac, Inc. (an Hawaiian hospitality industry conglomerate).
🔻 Harvey House, Seligman, Ariz.
PostScript: FH Menu dishes
Not surprisingly the FHC menus included a noticeably Latino-Mexican flavour—including Bright Angel Mexican Salisbury Steak, Guacamole Monterey, Empanadas with Vanilla Sauce, Fried Chicken Castãneda and Albondigas Soup (‘Classic Harvey House recipes’).
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ⓐ the Santa Fe line ended at Needles in eastern California, where it connected with another railroad which completed the journey west to the Pacific
ⓑ it is estimated that of the approximately 100,000-plus Harvey Girls in the company’s history, perhaps as much as ⅕ of them stayed and settled down to married life in the West, ‘The Harvey Girls, a Slice of American History’, (updated 26-Apr-2012), www.hubpages.com
ⓒ Hopi, Navajo, Pueblo, Apache and other Southwestern tribes
Having traversed the slopes of Zhângbáishān nán (Changbaishan South) and Zhângbáishān xī (Changbaishan West), it is only fitting and proper, in the best traditions of Ed (Hilary), that you should explore the other available slope at Changbai, the North Slope❅.
Zhângbáishān bêi is the most popular section of the Changbai Mountain range. Everywhere across the West slope there were buses unloading visitors, many, many visitors and (therefore) queues! Understandably, the punters were predominantly Chinese from the vast pool of internal tourists who travel from all over the country, but also discernible were pockets of South Korean tourists, including women wearing the hanbok (traditional Korean formal dress).
Before you join the hordes of people ascending the wooden staircase to get a better view of the mountain waterfalls, you might want to linger around the shop stalls long enough to sample the local “hot spring eggs” which are boiled ‘naturally’ in situ in the surrounding hot springs. After trying the eggs (also available in a range of colours), another activity that takes on the element of ritual for the secular visitors is the quasi-ceremonial washing of hands in the nearby “hand washing pool” (supposedly according to the sign posted, a very warm 42°C).
As you proceed along the wooden walkway you will see, strewn all over the ground, pock-marked water holes comprising the mountain’s naturally-heated springs. Most climbers will make for a spot on the boardwalk that will offer the best vantage for the many waterfalls cascading down from the rim of the mountains.
The waterfalls, whose origin point is the majestic strato-volcanic Changbai wonder of Tianchi lake (known in local circles as “the source of three rivers”), function as an ideal backdrop for the myriad of visitors intent on getting their full complement of selfies.
The steps to the right take you up to a quaint bridge and viewing platforms, under which the Weihe River flows down from the main waterfall which comprises a 68-metre drop from the top. Around this spot you can be guaranteed of getting the best vistas of the range and waterfalls.
Another thing you can do here, also with an element of the ritual to it, is drink from the “sacred well”, the Yu Jiang spring. But of course, partaking of the healing waters of Changbaishan is of itself not sufficient, the authentic tourist experience necessitates visual documentation of the ritual.
While you are ‘playing’ the North Slope (as one Chinese English-language promotional blurb interestingly described it), this might also involve a trek through the wilderness down a long set of steps to explore another stretch of Changbai waters. The notice near the start of the wooden track alerting you to the fact that the proximate wilderness is the habitat of the Siberian tiger might be a salutary warning to anyone who might be foolishly tempted to wander too far off the track.
My appetite whetted, I wanted to delve a bit more of the mystery of the “Hermit Kingdom”, so long cloaked in secrecy to the outside world. A subsequent boat trip up the Yalu left me little more enlightened about what life looked like across the border. Although our hire vessel got pretty close at times to the North Korean mainland, there was a bland homogeneity to what I could see…miles and miles of attractive but uninhabited hills and meadows, pockets of farmed land, the odd isolated building, a few roads, the occasional vehicle, but hardly a human to be sighted!❈
Touring Changbai County
The Changbai border towns on the Chinese side are quite remote and relatively lightly populated (most of the internal tourists skip straight past them and make for the much vaunted mountains themselves). All along the Yalu river border between the two countries, there were no Korean border posts or guards in sight. The river itself was the only buffer (no barbed wire fences like I saw north of Dandong). It occurred to me that this un-patrolled, quite narrow and innocuous-looking waterway would not pose much of a challenge to any impoverished North Korean determined enough to escape to the Chinese side in pursuit of a better and more prosperous life. It wasn’t hard for me to imagine Korean refugees clandestinely slipping across the river border and being absorbed into a community with which it already had cultural and linguistic affinities.
Having hired a Baishan taxi for the day, we visited several of these border villages on route S303. Here I got a chance to see just much Korean culture had permeated the border and river into China. At one point on the river near Maluguo Town, we stopped at a spot where some peasant farmers had laid out their bright harvest of red peppers on the wall to dry (and to sell). This was part of a little trading post peddling various little North Korean trinkets and knicknaks.
The Korean changgu, integrated into Changbai County public sculpture and municipal utilities ▼▲
Korean influences on Changbai County
Continuing on for a few hundred yards we stopped at Guoyuan Village, a tourist an attraction in border country which houses a model Korean village. The village consists of some basic Korean log timber dwellings, a backyard produce garden and a well. The adjoining Korean-style gardens contains a pleasant stream with an agricultural water-wheel with a scattering of sculptures. We stayed here about an hour, wandering the gardens and taking photos. Curiously the place was deserted, we were the only visitors here, no staff around either (though there was a Korean restaurant at the front of the village). Suffice it to say it was a very peaceful and serene setting and a very pleasant diversion.
Heroic scenes from Chinese history ▲
Spying on the North Koreans? ▲
Imitation Great Wall and scenic North Korean peak ▲
A pagoda-roofed border site for scenic views of the DPRK▼
The canyon boardwalk takes about 40 to 50 minutes to complete, depending on how fast you want to go, how many times you want to stop and injest the atmosphere and the scenic views, take photos, etc.
The canyon cuts its way through a dense forest of ancient arboreal specimens. The raised boardwalk allows spectacular views down the 100-metre deep canyon to the river. The walk includes a couple of Indiana Jones-style swaying bridges (not quite as ‘hairy’ a crossing as in the “Lost Raiders” movie). The highlight of the canyon for me was the multitude of intriguing and unusual rock formations to be seen.
