Barstow Harvey House: Casa del Desierto

Standing at the edge of the Mojave Desert, the building in front of you is one of the most elegant survivors of America's railroad age. This is Casa del Desierto, Barstow's Harvey House, and it tells the story of how the American Southwest was tamed not by soldiers but by fried chicken and professional waitresses.

The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway reached this desert crossing in the eighteen eighties, but the first depot burned in nineteen oh eight. The railroad responded by commissioning something grander, and in nineteen eleven the new Spanish Colonial Revival station opened. Architects designed it with twin towers, terra cotta rooflines, and shaded arcades meant to make exhausted desert travelers feel they had arrived somewhere civilized.

The genius behind the station's operation was Fred Harvey, an English-born entrepreneur who had struck a deal with the Santa Fe in eighteen seventy-six. Harvey promised punctual meals, clean linens, and consistent quality at every depot along the line. His most famous innovation was the Harvey Girls, young women recruited from the Midwest and East who wore crisp black uniforms, earned respectable wages, and kept the dining rooms running with clockwork precision. During the boom decades of the nineteen twenties through the nineteen forties, a train pulled into Barstow roughly every thirty minutes. Passengers could choose between two dining rooms, one formal enough to require a dinner jacket, the other offering a casual lunch counter. The kitchen made its own ice cream daily.

When the railroad transferred passengers to automobiles and airlines, the House fell silent. Santa Fe closed it in nineteen seventy-three. Then a nineteen ninety-two earthquake left it in ruins, and for years it was a hollow shell on the edge of Route Sixty-Six.

The City of Barstow purchased and restored the building. Today it serves as an Amtrak stop and houses two museums: the Route Sixty-Six Mother Road Museum and the Western America Railroad Museum. In the waiting room, you can still see the ornate woodwork and tiled floors that welcomed cross-country travelers when this desert station was the grandest building for a hundred miles in any direction.