When the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe railroad was finally connected to Dodge City in 1872, some of the rails were actually placed on the old wagon ruts of the Santa Fe Trail. The station opened in 1896.
"On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe" is also an Academy Award-winning song from the 1946 movie The Harvey Girls, sung by Judy Garland. I'll never forget the first time I watched that movie as a child. Judy Garland looks so beautiful in this film.
There was a Harvey House Restaurant and Hotel in Dodge City, Kansas. The hotel, one of the largest Harvey Houses in Kansas, opened in 1900 and closed in 1948. The Harvey Hotels and Restaurants, started by Fred Harvey, who wisely connected the hotel and restaurant chain to the railroad depots, helped "tame" the West by providing quality food and service to all who came through the Harvey House doors. Harvey advertised for beautiful, single women to work in his restaurants, knowing this would appeal to the population in the small Western cattle and mining towns where men generally outnumbered women nine to one.
I was reading this hobo magazine and it said that the space between the rails in a railroad track is the exact distance between the wheels in an ancient Roman chariot.
ReplyDeleteThe influence of the Roman Empire is with us to this day.