Appetite for America

by Stephen Fried

  So as Fred Harvey traveled through the West, eating one ghastly meal after another, he couldn’t help but think of the exquisitely comforting food of the Logan House in Altoona and the trackside victual indulgence of the Grand Excursion and wonder if such culinary magic shows could have regularly scheduled performances in the West.

  CHAPTER 7

  THEY’LL TRY ANYTHING

  FRED DIDN’T WANT TO GIVE UP HIS LUCRATIVE DAY JOB, SO HE first explored the railroad food business with a partner: Colonel Jasper “Jepp” Rice, the longtime owner of the Planters’ House in Leavenworth, who had been his landlord and friend for a decade. They started a company, Harvey & Rice, and got themselves hired to handle the food service at three eating houses along the Kansas Pacific where Fred had endured particularly loathsome meals.

  None of the eating houses were anywhere near Leavenworth. The closest one was in Lawrence, thirty-four miles away. The next was four hundred miles west, on the opposite side of the state, in the cattle town of Wallace, where Rice also owned a herd. And the third was still another hundred miles beyond that, in Hugo, Colorado, nestled near the rich mining towns on the way to Denver. Despite these distances, Fred wasn’t an absentee manager. During much of the year, he was in these towns as much as he was at home, traveling at an ever more grueling pace. On any given day in any western city where there was exploding growth, Fred Harvey seemed to have just arrived or was just leaving, his visits well documented in the pages of the small-town newspapers cropping up all over the West.

  Still, he had to place an enormous amount of trust in his new eating house managers: Not only did they represent him to patrons, but they were empowered to sign his name to all correspondence and orders. Since he still had several young men working for him on the road doing collections for railroad freight orders, he simply elevated some of his best workers to the eating house positions. Loyalty, trustworthiness, and the ability to instill confidence in people were more important to him than restaurant experience. He could teach them what they needed to know, making up new rules and guidelines for them as situations presented themselves. One day he made a note to himself: “Shall I make a deduction [discount] for Indians and paupers?”

  The managers kept track of everything they did in handwritten logs that he could inspect when he visited. And Fred did as much of the ordering himself as possible.

  One of the biggest challenges in the eating houses was keeping up with the incessant demand for cigars—which apparently were more important to western diners than food, especially way out in cattle country. It was not uncommon for Fred to order several thousand cigars at a time for each house—Golden Crowns, small and large, Londres Grandes, Graciosas, and, for the Wallace House, lower-priced Conchas. One bill for six thousand cigars to stock three eating houses came to $433.50 ($8,983). And one of the manager’s most important jobs was always keeping Fred personally apprised of the cigar inventory.

  Because he was suddenly ordering so many provisions, Fred used the opportunity to get cigars and delicacies for himself and his friends, especially Byron Schermerhorn back in Chicago. He started writing notes to himself: “Send Schermerhorn prairie chickens [a type of grouse once plentiful in America], black tail dear, buffalo meat,” or “Send Ball some white fish.”

  NOT LONG AFTER they took over the three eating houses, Fred and Jepp Rice realized something: They really hated being business partners. Each thought the other wasn’t pulling his weight, and the Kansas Pacific wasn’t easy to work with: The railroad agreed to help pay for shipping materials to the houses, but only by refund, for which Fred had to painstakingly invoice them for every last cigar and prairie chicken. He agreed to honor the contract, but soon started looking for an opportunity to strike out on his own with another railroad.

  He spoke first to his bosses at the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, telling them about the great potential he saw in their eating houses in Illinois, Missouri, and Kansas. They weren’t interested, but suggested he talk to someone at one of the smaller, newer railroads, the upstart Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe.

  The Santa Fe—as it was known—was still pretty much a wannabe railroad, with a scant 560 miles of track in Kansas, 65 miles in Colorado, and about a mile and a quarter in Missouri. But it did have a reputation for a certain kind of frontier thinking that was unusual among the conservative, eastern-owned railroad companies.

  “They’ll try anything” is what people in the train business said about the Santa Fe, with a mixture of respect and incredulity.

  This was, after all, the first rail line with a station in the gunslinging town of Dodge City, Kansas, where Wyatt Earp had just recently arrived to help keep the peace. Its passengers were known for gleefully firing their pistols and rifles out the train windows. Started by Cyrus Holliday, a lawyer from central Pennsylvania who came west in the 1850s to seek his fortune in railroads, the AT&SF was originally just the Atchison & Topeka, with a mission to link those two Kansas towns, some sixty miles apart, by laying tracks along the section of the Santa Fe Trail that already connected them for stagecoaches and carriages. But Holliday’s railroad got a new name and an extremely ambitious new end point during the Civil War, when the government started giving out larger land grants; its executives dreamed of building along the trail all the way to Santa Fe, New Mexico, itself, replacing the entire stagecoach business, and then taking advantage of that city’s historic role as the hub for trade from Mexico. Because the AT&SF route covered so much barren, virgin American ground, the railroad became known for aggressively “seeding” the land around its tracks, luring new settlers from the eastern states and all over the European continent with discounted train tickets, inexpensive acreage, and even “loans” of seed that farmers could repay after harvest (as long as they used the Santa Fe for shipping).

  The plague of grasshoppers in 1874 had almost done in the Santa Fe, since its fortunes were so closely tied to agriculture. But the railroad had held on, and things were now looking up, because the Kansas wheat harvest of 1875 had turned out to be a great success.

  Fred knew the superintendent of the Santa Fe, Charlie Morse, from when he worked in Nebraska for a different railroad. The two men decided to try a project together. The Santa Fe had a twenty-seat lunchroom on the second floor of its Topeka depot. It was a much smaller space than any of the eating houses Fred was managing for the Kansas Pacific, but Morse assured him he could run it exactly as he pleased.

  True to form, Fred negotiated a superb deal for himself. Not only did he get the space rent free, but he convinced the Santa Fe to cover all the utilities (which in those days were heat, gas, coal, and ice) and throw in free transportation for his eating house provisions and his employees. As landlord, the railroad also covered the major “back of the house” equipment expenses like the ovens, ranges, sinks, and iceboxes. Fred still had to pay for the food itself, labor, and any upgrades to the “front of the house”—furniture, linens, dishes, stemware, and silverware. But after that, he could keep any profits.

  He would, however, need to impress more than the passengers and crew from the five Santa Fe trains stopping at Topeka daily. While the railroad was based in Boston, its main operations office was across the street from the Topeka terminal. So Fred Harvey’s meals would have to delight Charlie Morse and all the other top brass on a regular basis.

  The two men shook hands on the deal—there was no written contract—and Fred sprang into action. He sent for his wife, Sally, as well as one of his most trusted employees from over the years, Guy Potter. Together, they scrubbed the small second-floor lunchroom from top to bottom and then replaced all the dishes, silverware, and stemware. Fred arranged with the Santa Fe and purveyors as far away as Chicago, St. Louis, and Boston to have fresh meat, produce, and specially roasted coffee brought in by train, rather than relying on what was available nearby. Potter agreed to become the manager.

  When they opened for business in January 1876, Fred was there as the first customer came through the door. It was n
ot a Santa Fe executive at all but rather Shep Smith, a nineteen-year-old rookie train fireman still waiting for his first mustache to fill in. Smith would later vividly recall Fred approaching him as he sat on one of the swiveling chairs along the long curved counter.

  “Have some coffee, Shep,” Fred said. “It’s the first I’ve made. Tell me if it’s any good.”

  Shep tried a steaming cup and declared it excellent. “Your coffee’s good, Harvey,” he said between sips, “but your place is too small. Three men would crowd it, and you have to climb a long flight of steps to get up here.”

  “Right-o,” Fred replied, “but I’m going to make the coffee and food so good that the boys will come, no matter how far they have to walk.”

  Smith ordered a sandwich and a piece of the apple pie he saw cooling on the counter. They sliced him a wedge that was nearly a quarter of the pie and placed it before him. Smith cut through the flaky crust with one of those brand-new forks, stabbed himself a generous bite, raised it to his mouth. And, damn, it was good.

  The opening of Fred Harvey’s lunchroom in the Santa Fe depot in Topeka would later be touted as a major turning point in culinary history, perfectly timed for the beginning of America’s centennial year. There is an oft-repeated story that the lunchroom was such an overnight success that the railroad feared western migration itself might be halted because nobody wanted to go past Topeka once they had tasted Fred Harvey’s food. But in fact, success did not come quite so quickly or easily.

  The Santa Fe lunchroom did get a nice little write-up in the Leavenworth Times on January 5, 1876, describing the eatery as “the neatest, cleanest dining hall in the State, everything bran [sic] new. The crockery, cutlery and silverware of the choicest patterns, and the table supplied in the best of style. It was a luxury to set down to such a table. A man who takes such pains to serve the public ought to be rewarded with liberal patronage.” The paper didn’t mention the owner—just Leavenworth’s own Guy Potter behind the counter. But since Fred was now working for three different railroads that were competing bitterly for business in Kansas, perhaps that was just as well.

  AS THE SUMMER OF 1876 approached, the nation was caught up in the celebration of the hundredth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and the founding of America. Many people flocked to Philadelphia for the Centennial Exhibition. That world’s fair would be remembered mostly for the products that debuted and were popularized there: the telephone, the electric light, the typewriter, and soda pop. But at the time, the exhibition signaled that America not only had survived its civil war but was on its way to becoming an international power. In fact, one immediate economic impact of the Centennial Exhibition—which attracted some ten million visitors to Philadelphia—was that America’s traditional international trade deficit reversed itself for the first time.

  The big celebration was on the Fourth of July. Amid the military parades, the Declaration of Independence was read aloud from the steps of the building at 6th and Chestnut streets where it was originally signed. Immediately afterward, Susan B. Anthony strode to the podium and read aloud her “Declaration of Rights for Women,” while a friend held a parasol over her head to block the midday sun.

  But the nation’s self-congratulatory mood suffered a major setback several days later, when the newspapers reported what had happened to George Custer’s troops in southeastern Montana Territory. At Little Bighorn, Custer and all 225 of his men had been killed while attacking a camp of Sioux and Cheyenne under the formidable command of Chief Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse.

  In the eastern press coverage of “Custer’s Last Stand,” there was no question that the Indians were villains and an American hero had been felled. Where the Harveys lived, however, the issue of Little Bighorn was more complicated; in Leavenworth, Custer’s legacy was more ambiguous, and “the Indian Question” was still a question.

  The Harveys knew the Custers, who had lived on and off at the fort for years and were active on the city’s social scene. So they were well aware that Custer had once been court-martialed in Leavenworth for deserting his command, taking seventy-five soldiers to work on his own personal business matters, and then ordering the execution of three “supposed deserters” who were shot without a trial.

  And the “cause” for which he and his troops had given their lives at Little Bighorn was also controversial. The government had sent Custer to roust the Sioux out of the Black Hills, where gold had been discovered. But that land originally had been given to the Indians in a treaty. It was only after the economic downturn that Washington had decided to take it back, by force if necessary.

  In Leavenworth, there were powerfully mixed feelings about the government’s Indian policy. The fort was still the place from which troops were deployed for the “Indian Wars,” and many of the casualties—including those from Little Bighorn—were buried in Leavenworth’s national cemetery. Tribal leaders were often incarcerated at the fort prison. And there was certainly a great deal of bigotry. But people in Leavenworth saw “friendly Indians” on the street every day, mostly from the large and peaceful Pottawatomie reservation nearby. Fred and many others did business with the local tribal leaders through Enoch Hoag, the government’s superintendent for Indian Affairs in Kansas.

  In fact, Indians were sometimes among the many customers trying out the new and improved Santa Fe eating house in Topeka. Not long after Little Bighorn, a group of ninety-six Sioux stopped for lunch. Local newspaper coverage of the event wasn’t particularly kind:

  People were a little disappointed upon seeing them, for all expected to see them in their war costume, with their bloody tomahawks and dripping scalping knives … Upon arriving at the depot a number of bucks with tin buckets made a break for the eating house where they got hot coffee and returned to their cars, where they partook of their frugal meal, which consisted of boiled beef without seasoning, and coffee. They gorge themselves when they eat. They all eat out of the same pan and drink coffee out of the same can. This is the reason they are not allowed to go into hotels to eat. They don’t know how to behave themselves … However, a few of the “big injuns” were allowed the privilege of setting at the white man’s table. Messrs. Spotted Tail, Red Dog and Fast Bear were taken to the railroad eating house, where they partook of double rations. They got away with everything set before them, in fact, everything that was within reach. They exhibited some of the traits of a human by using knives and forks, and blowing their coffee to cool it. They also mopped their mouths with napkins which they forgot to put in their pockets after using.

  Mr. Tail understood the uses of the knives and forks. He held the piece with the fork while he severed it with the knife, and with his fingers he placed the largest piece on the knife and dumped it into his mouth. Mr. Dog wiped off his gooms with his tongue after eating enough for three big men like John Carter. But old pap Bear gave the crowd away. After getting up from the table he reached over and grabbed up all the apples he could hold in his big hands, which were about four apiece, probably under the sweet impression that he was stealing them.

  The reporter was particularly outraged by the way the local women interacted with the Indians. “Some of the ladies at the depot considered it a great honor to grasp these dusky murderers of the plains by the hand,” he wrote. “Red Dog was so struck with the beauty of a lady there that he returned to the room to get a look at her.”

  While it was possible to encounter diners of almost any ethnicity and occupation at Fred’s lunchroom in Topeka—Russian Mennonites on their way to start farms, Chinese laborers heading west to lay tracks, German Jews hoping to start businesses in the new towns, veterans of both sides of the Civil War, cowboys, and Indians—it didn’t mean that everyone got along. Sometimes the only thing they all agreed on was Fred Harvey’s coffee.

  CHAPTER 8

  SUITED TO THE MOST EXIGENT OR EPICUREAN TASTE

  PRED MANAGED THE LUNCHROOM IN TOPEKA FOR NEARLY TWO years—while still overseeing three eating houses on the Kans
as Pacific—before doing any further business with the Santa Fe. The Harveys had another child, a son, who was named after Fred’s best friend: Byron Schermerhorn Harvey. (The Captain returned the favor by naming one of his daughters Fredericka, but she died in infancy.) And Fred continued selling freight for the Burlington line. But then he became intrigued, as did so many in the western railroad business, when the AT&SF suddenly became much more aggressive, and much more appealing.

  In 1877, the Santa Fe rustled much of the western cattle business and, in the process, reinvented Dodge City as the fabled locale we know today. Dodge had already peaked as a center for buffalo hunting, and the stakes in local poker games were not what they used to be. But before the 1877 roundup, the Santa Fe built large cattle pens and a livestock shipping center at its Dodge City station—which was a hundred miles closer to where the cattle actually grazed than the livestock pens of the powerful Kansas Pacific. The Santa Fe also cut shipping prices, and suddenly many cattlemen driving their herds up from Texas switched railroads.

  This turned Dodge City, almost overnight, into a raucous center of commerce—and the most dangerous new outpost in the Wild West. It also inspired a popular joke of the day. A train conductor approaches a drunken old prospector sprawled out over several seats and asks where he’s going.

  “To hell, I guess,” the prospector replies.

  “OK, that’ll be 65 cents,” the conductor says. “Get off at Dodge City.”

  In the aftermath of this cattle business coup, the Santa Fe announced a bold front-office move that rocked the industry. The railroad poached one of the most talented young executives in the business from the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy to become the new general manager of the AT&SF.