The Continued Evolution Of John's E-Mail Regarding The Tres Lagunas Fire

Wrote to John in OKC:

John:

Two years ago you sent a (highly-amusing) YouTube video regarding the Tres Lagunas Fire, and I made a blog post about it. Interestingly, this article about the Fred Harvey girls makes reference to that blog post:

Basically, from the 1880s through the 1940s, Fred Harvey (the company went by the founder’s name) was the dominant food-service entity in America—the country’s first national chain of restaurants, of hotels, of anything, stretching from Cleveland to California. And up through the early 1970s, it remained important in the Southwest, predominantly in Santa Fe, where it had run La Fonda Hotel since 1926; in Albuquerque, where it ran the Alvarado Hotel from 1901 until its demolition in 1970; and at the Grand Canyon, where it had run all the hotels on the South Rim since 1905. The company also ran all the Santa Fe railroad dining cars from Chicago to California until Amtrak took over in 1972, and restaurants in major city union stations.

Its all-female restaurant service staff was legendary—especially after Judy Garland became the most famous of the 100,000 single women who served as “Harvey Girls,” in her 1946 MGM musical of the same name. But the Harvey Girls were just the most appealing part of an empire that lasted for generations, offering access and perspective to a saga of cowboys and Indians and railroads and politicians and how the Southwest was won—a wholly alternative version of our nation’s past through the prism of a completely different set of multicultural founding fathers and mothers.

Changing the world one E-Mail at a time!

Marc

John replies:

Hey Marc,

There is no end in sight for the fires in NM until, I suppose, the trees are pretty much gone. Chaco Canyon once had white pines on the rim--the last one died in 1927. Will the rest of the state wind up the same? Quien sabe?

The reference to Harvey Houses made me wonder about the old Val Verde Hotel in Socorro (a favorite hangout of Will Rogers in the 1920's and 30's) and whether it was one. It wasn't but there was one in San Marcial. I need to read up more on the history of that town:

San Marcial was located on the banks of Rio Grande in Central New Mexico. Today nothing exists of what had once been the fourth largest city in New Mexico with a population of 4000. The city was completely destroyed by a series of floods during the month of August 1929. This is what happened the day of the final flood that removed the city from existence. As the water level rose many people were trapped on the second floor of the hotel, both customers and employees. There were no formal rescue teams at that time and the trapped folks were in great danger. On that day along the banks of the Rio Grande there were many spectators watching the situation getting worse as the water level kept getting higher and higher. The hotel structure was beginning to break and many parts of the building started to float away. Whatever small boats that had been in the city had already been swept away by the raging river.

See ya,
John