Fred Harvey and His Post Cards

Fred Harvey (June 27, 1835–February 9, 1901) has done wonders to promote the beauty of the Arizona desert. In 1878 Fred Harvey established a chain of “Harvey House” restaurants and hotels across the southwestern United States. Much was done to market the region including publishing large series of post cards depicting Native Americans and local scenery. Harvey's partnership with the Santa Fe began in 1876 when he struck a deal with Charles Morse, the superintendent of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad (Santa Fe). In 1897 Harvey took over the news stands for the railroad and distributed post cards. A large amount of post cards were produced depicting the Arizona scenery and the Santa Fe trains as they passed through. Fred Harvey himself provided some of the images for these cards until his death in 1901. When Fred Harvey died there were 47 Harvey House restaurants, 15 hotels, and 30 dining cars operating on the Santa Fe Railway.

The first post card picture is of a bridge then a tunnel. These are at Johnson’s canyon; about half way between Flagstaff and Seligman, Arizona, just west of Williams where one can take a steam train ride to the Grand Canyon. Santa Fe used the steeper Johnson Canyon route, opened in 1882, for east-west rail travel and the gentler "Coconino Cut" route to the north for west-east rail travel through to the early 1960's. The line was finally abandoned in 1962 and the rails removed when the "Coconino Cut" route (a much gentler grade) was double-tracked. It is quite a hike, but one can still get to the tunnel to see the old route. The middle post card is an image of a Santa Fe diesel cruising on the main line of the Santa Fe railroad through Crozier Canyon in northwestern Arizona. Today, you can still take pictures similar to this one. The canyon is still accessible from Route 66. The website: http://www.northamericanrails.com/bnsf_transcon_across_az_seligman_sub/bnsf_-_seligman_sub_-_crozier_area gives you directions of how to get close to the Santa Fe main line to take great pictures of trains. The bottom post card is of Canyon Diablo. I am very familiar with this area. We used to spend our summers exploring northern Arizona when I was growing up. Canyon Diablo is very close to the “world famous” Meteor Crater. It is about half way between Flagstaff and Winslow. It, too, is on the main line of the Santa Fe railroad. Canyon Diablo was given its name by a Lieutenant Whipple in 1853. This canyon presented such an obstacle to his historic thirty-fifth parallel survey party that he wanted to let all that followed know what he thought of it. Devil's Canyon was appropriately named. Other survey parties, like Whipple's, had to go miles out of their way just to cross the canyon. The railroad tried to span the canyon in 1881 but Canyon Diablo once more lived up to its name. Evidently the timber parts of the railroad bridge were pre-assembled elsewhere and the plans were misread. The bridge came up several feet short! Today is has a modern steel bridge and it is used by the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad on a regular basis.

On the back side of the cards to the top left we can see Fred Harvey’s signature advertising that there are hotels, shops and restaurants waiting to serve our needs. Between 1901 and 1932 the Company contracted all their cards with the Detroit Publishing Company. These cards have an H prefix before their identification number, which you can see on the front of the cards as part of their titles. After Detroit closed, many of Harvey’s cards were contracted out to Curt Teich. These three post cards are printed by Curt Otto Teich. You can see the evidence at the bottom middle of the post cards. By this time, Curt Teich’s company had settled on a convenient way to date and number their post cards. The numbers for these cards are from top to bottom: 1B-H752, 1B-H751 and 1B-H752. The 1B indicates the year the post card was printed. B indicates that it was printed in the 1940s. The 1 indicates that it was specifically 1941. The H- indicates that the post card was printed using the “Art Colortone” method. Most post card collectors will recognize these as the “linen” post cards. In 1941 there were 2693 different pictures on these types of post cards printed by The Teich Company. Through a bit of math we can see that these cards were printed somewhere in the beginning of April of that year.