Harvey Girl

Wanted: Young women, 18 to 30 years of age, of good moral character, attractive and intelligent, as waitresses in the Harvey Eating Houses on the Santa Fe Railroad in the West. Good wages with room and meals furnished. Liberal tips customary. Experience not necessary. Harvey Girls served gourmet meals to passengers of the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway. During the late 1800s and the first half of the 1900s, Harvey Houses were a familiar sight to train travelers in the American West. There were one hundred Harvey Houses and about a hundred thousand Harvey Girls over the years. In a time when there were limited career choices for women, becoming a Harvey Girl offered rare independence for young ladies. In 1919 one such Harvey Girl is feisty Clara Fern Massie, an Ozark farm girl who runs away from home on her fourteenth birthday after standing up to her harsh father. Heading west and taking a job as a waitress–a Harvey Girl–the underage Clara struggles to learn the demanding “Harvey Way” and shed her farm-girl image to become a confident, independent woman.