Not this Vegas. The one in New Mexico. We stopped there on our way to Albuquerque last Thursday. I am sure you figured out by now I was away from home for the last ten days. Anyway, we stopped there because we needed a map of Albuquerque and saw a sign on the Interstate that said there was a Tourist Information Center in the town. When we got there we found out it was housed in the old train depot right next to a dilapidated old railroad hotel.
As I pulled the car into a parking space that faced the south side of the hotel I glanced up at one of the windows on the second floor and got the impression that a woman was standing there looking down at me. I turned my attention back to my driving and after I stopped the car and put it in park I looked up at the window again. I could not see anyone but I still had the feeling someone was watching me. I kept looking at the window as I climbed out of the car and turned to ask my husband if he could see anyone but he was all ready out of the car and halfway to the depot building. I followed him. As I walked across the lot I still felt I was being watched and so I kept turning to look up at the window where I saw the woman until I reached the door to the depot. I found the whole thing confusing because I knew enough railroad history to know that most guests were men in these old hotels. I could not imagine why I was seeing the ghost of a woman. When I got inside tourist office I found out the hotel had been a Harvey House.
Fred Harvey opened his first Harvey House in 1875. Harvey had worked in restaurants as a young man and then spent the next 30 years working for railroad companies. One thing Harvey hated about rail travel (this was before dinning cars were invented) was the food served in road houses at rail stops. These "restaurants" were filthy, served over priced badly prepared food and provided terrible service. Road houses were also so chaotic that most of the time the majority of the people waiting to be served did not get any food before the "train leaving" whistle sounded. Harvey knew he could do better and made a deal with the Atchison, Topeka,and Santa Fe Railway to build and run restaurants at all the major stops on the line.
His restaurants were a success but ten years after opening the first Harvey House he decided to replace his men waiters with women. This was because the men were causing more problems then they were worth by showing up to work drunk, or not at all, and getting into fights with the customers. Harvey decide he would hire and train young women to work in his restaurants. He described the women he wanted as, "...young woman, 18 to 30 years of age, of good character, attractive and intelligent." To make sure he attracted the refined women he wanted to work for him, he also provide housing. At some point Harvey also decided to build hotels around his restaurants and in 1904 he build the La Castaneda in Las Vegas, New Mexico. The women who worked in the Harvey House restaurant lived in rooms on the second floor of the hotel. (This is what the woman at the TIC told me. Their website says the Harvey Girls lived here) The La Castaneda's Harvey House phase ended in 1948. The hotel stayed in business after that but by 2002 only the bar remained open. Then that closed and the hotel passed through a couple of owners. The owner before the present one has the second floor gutted and then redesigned the space into apartments. That didn't fly and the hotel now sits largely empty with the present owner the only tenant.
The fact that it was a Harvey House may explain why I saw the ghost of a woman. She must have lived, or at least, worked there in life. How she died or why she is still there is mystery though.
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