| dc.description.abstract | This dissertation examines social change in the Southwest within the intersection of gender and “Indianness” in the tourism industry, through the lens of the Fred Harvey Company between the 1880s-1940s. Fred Harvey was an English immigrant entrepreneur who established the Fred Harvey Company in 1875 after working as a traveling postman and seeing the deplorable conditions on the railroad. Through this enterprise, he not only promoted luxury travel, but also commodified the cultural distinctiveness of the West. The Atchison Topeka and Santa Fe partnered with the Harvey Company in 1878 to extend accommodations through the southwest, which eventually became the most lucrative area for the company and the railroad at the turn of the century. The highlights were the architecture and décor of the hotels, the Harvey Girl waitresses, and the Indian Detours service with women couriers and Native artisans and demonstrators.
This research not only focuses on the history of the Fred Harvey Company era and its distinct tourism business, but also how these practices of heritage tourism and staged authenticity are memorialized in the present. Recent preservation movements have made an effort to preserve railroad heritage in Northern New Mexico and Arizona through both the restoration of regional Harvey Houses and the maintenance of public memory through the Harvey Girls and Indian Detours. In this, I address the distinct omissions of the Native women and artisans, both past and present, who have been prominent in the process by demonstrating what is at stake in memorializing one group and not the other. In addition, I question why the Harvey Girl waitresses have been celebrated and continue to be prominent in the public eye with multiple books and documentaries, but not the Indian Detour couriers, an arguably more progressive group.
Accompanying these themes, I examine the history of this practice through current preservation work, the subsequent community revitalization, and the public history movement regarding its legacy and memory. This research is highlighted using archival materials, including letters and postcards, travelogues, promotional materials, and articles, along with in-depth interviews with those involved in memorialization of the Fred Harvey Company and the romanticized image of the Southwest. | |
