All Aboard for Santa Fe: Railway Promotion of the Southwest, 1890s to 1930s

by Victoria E. Dye

Book Overview

By the late 1800s, the major mode of transportation for travelers to the Southwest was by rail. In 1878, the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway Company (AT&SF) became the first railroad to enter... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0826336582
• ISBN13: 9780826336583
• Release Date: January 2007
• Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
• Length: 175 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.3" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

Easy readin' . . . loaded with facts and persuasive conclusions

Author has extracted oodles of technical references into an overview that covers a vital sixty-year span of American Southwest history. Victoria Dye skillfully illuminates the intertwining of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad Company (AT & SF) with its more visual counterpart and partner, the Fred Harvey Company. In a mere six chapters, along with a smattering of descriptive BW photos, the author summarizes the wild ethnic mixture of the early Southwestern frontier with a strong emphasis on the economic impact of the myriad cultures. She describes how Harvey and AT & SF precipitated the view of pioneer New Mexico and Arizona as `Indian' more than `Mexican or Spanish,' even though the domineering government and religion was of the latter for hundreds of years. Dye further characterizes how the Harvey/AT & SF promotions helped travelers [remarkably] overcome the spectre of Indian hostilities, replacing fear with their inventive illusion of `Santa Fe' gentility. Marketing, promotion and economics are the core of the book. The author is to be highly commended for distilling five centuries of Cultural Revolution in to 100 pages of easy reading. The bibliography yields [literally] hundreds of literary resources (perhaps this book's most valuable contribution) for further reader interest. The author's supplemental material helps substantiate a "who's who" timeline of AT & SF, Fred Harvey, Santa Fe, curio and Southwestern Indian history - don't miss these appendix, page notes, and bibliographic features!