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Book Reviews

The Great Southwest of the Fred Harvey Company and the Santa Fe Railway, edited by Marta Weigle and Barbara A. Babcock. The Heard Museum, Pheonix (printed by The University of Arizona Press, Tucson, for The Heard Museum), 1996

Authors
  • Douglas R. Givens

Abstract

One of the more colorful eras in American Southwestern archaelogy is reflected in The Great Southwest of the Fred Harvey Company and the Santa Fe Railway. Marta Weigle and Barbara A. Babcock, editors of the volume, have done a superb job weaving in early Southwestern archaeological activities with the role of the Fred Harvey Company and the Santa Fe Railway in bring the American Southwest to those "east of the Mississippi River".

Many early Southwestern archaeologists made their way throughout the Southwest on the Santa Fe Railway while the "outposts of civilization" that the Fred Harvey Company provided in many railroad stations served as a " bit of home" to the traveler. This book describes the collaboration of both Fred Harvey and the Santa Fe Railroad tourism in the American Southwest and provides an excellent look into the Native American artists and their comumnities which were transformed on a massive scale by the Fred Harvey Company as it bought, sold, and popularized Native American art. Also part of the volume is an excellent discussion of the network of major museums that hold art collections which were purchased through the Harvey Company's Indian Department.
Published on Nov 20, 1997