Luxury and Danger on the Iron Horse

In the 1870s and early 1880s, an English born restaurateur, Frederick Henry Harvey, opened a chain of depot restaurants along the Santa Fe line that served good food at moderate prices.  He upgraded his restaurants by adding attractive, young waitresses to his staff thus providing the frontier with a sense of class.  The "Harvey Girls" were the stuff of which poetry was written as one said, "She was winsome, she was neat, she was gloriously sweet and she certainly was very good to me."

Meanwhile inside the trains, George Pullman who had introduced the folding upper berths, thought that his Pullman Palace Car Company could change the travel experience for first class passengers.  With elegant dining cars and luxury parlor cars, the wealthy could never leave the train.  Using burnished walnut, damask draperies and plush seats that converted into beds, passengers could travel in style.  Menus for a holiday meal were 12 courses - oysters, lobster, roast game, and plum pudding, along with vintage French wine with each course.  Pullman was a study in Victorian excess.

Along with the luxuries came a few annoyances and even danger.  Constant dust from the road caused ladies to wear linen dusters over their dresses for protection.  At times cowboys invaded the sanctuary of first class to fire off a few rounds, spreading panic among the passengers.  Professional card sharks in the parlor cars used their skills to relieve the wealthy of their cash as one, George Devol, reportedly took passengers for over $2 million in card games.

More dangerous than these annoyances was the unpredictable weather on the plains.  Violent spring storms washed away tracks and bridges, while blizzards caused trains to stop altogether in the middle of nowhere, miles from civilization.  In 1875 a Denver-bound train ran into such a blizzard and it was 11 days before they could reach their destination.  With temperatures below freezing and food reduced to a few cans of oysters aboard, it was a danger not too uncommon for travelers of the rails.

The transcontinental railroad - along with the luxury and danger - the "iron horse"  would settle the West.

Next time...the new settlers
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Today in Pioneer History:  "On May 24, 1844, in a demonstration witnessed by members of Congress, American inventor Samuel F.B. Morse dispatches a telegraph message from the U.S. Capitol to Alfred Vail at a railroad station in Baltimore. The message–“What Hath God Wrought?”–was telegraphed back to the Capitol a moment later by Vail.