Harvey Hotel is a chain whose roots go all the way back to the Fred Harvey Company, which was established way back in 1876. The company started off with railroad dining houses in Kansas and Colorado, along the Kansas Pacific Railway. These establishments were more of a café conceptualized by Fred Harvey who was then a freight agent for the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad. The man immigrated to the US from England when he was 17. The railroad eating places were receiving good profits, especially when they expanded to more railways. The growth of the business was just remarkable that Fred Harvey was even given the credit for coming up with the first ever restaurant chain ever known in the United States.

Harvey wanted to take advantage of their being pioneers in such a fast-growing business, so along with his associates, they entered the tourism sector by incorporating lodging with the eating houses. The restaurant-hotel continued to flourish, especially with the addition of the Harvey Girls who waited for customers. The girls were such an iconic figure in the Wild West culture that Judy Garland starred in the film adaptation of Samuel Hopkins Adams’s novel The Harvey Girls.