| Founded by Frederick Henry Harvey in 1876, the Fred Harvey Company was a family-run hotel chain located along the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad's tracks. The development of the Fred Harvey Company and the Santa Fe Railroad reveals linkages between changes in transportation and the development of a consumer culture based on advertising. Harvey established pleasant dining houses for travelers on the Santa Fe while allowing the railroad to promote the Harvey Company's offerings. Under his son, Ford Harvey, the company built its tourist business gradually. Ford Harvey asserted more control over the business's growth than his father had, working with his sister Minnie Harvey Huckel and her husband John Huckel to create interesting destinations to draw visitors to the Southwest. They built this expansion on the company's historic strengths -- good food in comfortable (and comforting) surroundings -- but also embarked on a project to explain the region in a way that was itself comfortable to potential tourists. They put their efforts before a larger audience at California's fairs, miniaturizing the Southwest to make it even more accessible and interesting to fair-goers. Finally, they brought together the elements that they had implicitly been selling and began to provide an experience of tourism that was hostessed from beginning to end. The Harvey Company created a sense of comfort through its food, advertising, and staging in order to provide a commodified presentation of the Southwest to white tourists. Using promotional materials, constructed environments, and carefully-selected staff members, the Harvey Company made the Southwest more accessible (both literally and figuratively), comfortable, and interesting. I identify this kind of presentation as "hostessing." Ultimately, the Harvey Company itself would use the word "hostessing" to describe what its employees were doing in the Southwest, but I assert that it was engaged in this activity from the beginning. |
