Remember the Harvey Girls? 

They were the more than 100,000 young women who, from the 1880s through the 1960s, left their homes and traveled west to work as waitresses in Harvey House restaurants along the Santa Fe railroad—including in Arizona. 

The Harvey Girls: Opportunity Bound, a documentary film and new oral histories will be shown in conjunction with the Cline Library’s exhibit Fred Harvey: Branding the Southwest, which is sponsored by the Flagstaff Arts Council, the BBB, Flagstaff 365, and the Grand Canyon National Park Lodges.

"For women, it was an amazing opportunity to be independent,” said filmmaker Katrina Parks. “You could leave home, explore the American West and live in protected circumstances while earning enough money to send back to your family."

Following the original documentary at 1 PM, there will be a screening of new interviews and a discussion with a panel of history and culture experts including filmmaker Katrina Parks, editor/producer Thaddeus Homan, women’s history expert Dr. Heidi Osselaer, project manager Colleen Lucero of the Hopi Harvey Project and museum director Ann-Mary Lutzick of the Old Trails Museum at 2 PM.

The panelists will place the Harvey Girls within a larger women’s history context and discuss the significant impact the Harvey Girls had on the workplace, the hospitality business and the development of the American West.   They will also offer a more diverse perspective on the Harvey Girl experience than has been recorded and shared with the public to date. By continuing to gather oral histories, the public’s understanding of who the Harvey Girls were continues to evolve. 

The event is made possible by Arizona Humanities.  It is free and open to the public.