[PRCo] Re: Recommended Reading

[Fred Schneider]

I ate in a Xanterra facility at Death Valley in the spring of 2009.   I was underwhelmed.    There is a reason why many corporations last only one generation.   
Donald Duke once told me that anything the Santa Fe bought on which payment of sales taxes was required was funneled thorough Fred Harvey because Harvey had a sales tax license.   Don't know but Don was more of an expert in that area than I will ever be.   For those who don't know Don, he founded a company called Golden West Books which is still marginally in business.   Don is 81, not very healthy and not too interested in new titles these days.   

On many of our vacations together in the southwest over the years, he showed me a lot of old former Harvey Houses.   The Duke of San Marino once explained to me that before interstates, the Southern California Automobile Club used to list all the Harvey Houses in their directories because they were often the only act in town, they were generally good, and they were typically a days drive apart.   Therefore not only did the railroad riders use them, but if you were driving from Los Angeles to Needles or Kingman or Flagstaff or Williams or Albuquerque or anywhere along the Santa Fe, you stopped there too.   I am not going to say that the Santa Fe never bought enough diners for all their trains but if they did, it was very late.  They maintained food stops for some of the secondary trains long after most railroads served everyone in the dining cars.   I'm not sure if any of those southern style buildings are still open.    Some might still have been in the 1980s or 1990s.     

West Bestern, Motel 5 9/16th, Holiday Inn, Days Inn, Pilot Truck Stops and many other names have become the new landmarks.

There were things he showed me that were absolutely unbelievable because the west was simply so unsettled until just a few years ago.   We had millions of people living in the east when Pacific Electric was building trolley lines in Los Angeles County for only a couple hundred thousand souls.   Today 10 million people live there.   Even when I was born in 1940, there were only about 2.7 million people in that county    Today Los Angeles County has more people than New York City ... 1.7 million more people than the five counties that make up New York City.   

You might like this memory from Don's youth:  ... a plank road across the desert between Needles and El Centro, California.  He remembered that you drove one way in the morning and the other in the afternoon.    And he led me into the dunes looking for traces ... and there were the old planks.   Yes, I have slides to prove it.  Today the equivalent is called Interstate 8.   From single lane plank road to interstate in the lifetime of one man!

NO. 845 PLANK ROAD - This unique plank road, seven miles long, was the only means early motorists had of crossing the treacherous Imperial sand dunes. The 8-by-12-foot sections were moved with a team of horses whenever the shifting sands covered portions of the road. Double sections were placed at intervals to permit vehicles to pass.
Location: Algodones Sand Dunes County Rest Area, S side of I-8 (P.M. 77.4), 18 mi W of Winterhaven
USGS Quadrangle Sheet Name: GLAMIS 15
http://www.blm.gov/ca/st/en/fo/elcentro/recreation/ohvs/isdra/dunesinfo/history.html

On Jun 27, 2010, at 6:15 PM, Edward H. Lybarger wrote:

> It has nothing to do with Pittsburgh, but...
> 
> I've just finished reading "Appetite for America: How Visionary Businessman
> Fred Harvey Built a Railroad Hospitality Empire that Civilized the Wild
> West," by Stephen Fried.  If you're into rail-related business histories,
> it's a great read.  If you've ever eaten at a Fred Harvey facility (not many
> left!), you'll appreciate it even more.  The only ones that are still open
> and have been continuously are at the Grand Canyon (El Tovar and Bright
> Angel Lodge); the eponymous company is now part of Xanterra, a contractor to
> NPS.
> 
> We had dinner at El Tovar a year or so ago; it was enjoyable and good,
> though our favorite haunt in McMurray serves much better salmon (and for a
> much lower price).
> 
> The streetcar connection, for you purists?  Fred Harvey was once on the
> commission to restructure the insolvent Kansas City trolley company!
> 
> My copy will go to the PTM Library, where we maintain a small railroad
> section.
> 
> Ed
> 
>