Harvey Girls / Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter, 1869 - 1958

The hotel both faces point to stood across the street, and it is gone. The Alvarado opened in May 1902, named for Hernando de Alvarado of the Coronado expedition, and Colter returned to rework it in 1922 and again in 1939, when she hung lamps made from Mexican parrot cages in the lounge. The Santa Fe Railway closed it in January 1970 and began demolishing it on February 2, a month before its National Register listing came through. The site was a gravel parking lot until 2002, when the transit center built to echo it opened.

What the plaque says

Official Scenic Historic Marker Harvey Girls In 1883, the Fred Harvey Company hired women to serve in its diners and hotels along the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway. Thousands of respectable, intelligent women were recruited from the Midwest and East Coast to come west. Known as Harvey Girls, many of these women stayed and became founding members of their adopted communities, forever changing the cultural landscape of the Wild West. Official Scenic Historic Marker Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter, 1869-1958 In 1902, the Fred Harvey Company hired Mary Colter as interior designer of the Alvarado Hotel in Albuquerque. She was an architect for the company when few women worked in the field. She designed many famous resorts and inns, including the hotel interiors of La Fonda in Santa Fe. In 1987, four of her buildings in Grand Canyon National Park were designated a National Historic Landmark.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Petroglyph National Monument — 6.8 mi
  Some 24,000 images pecked into the dark basalt of Albuquerque's West Mesa, protected in 1990 and then crossed by a city boulevard.

More markers nearby

• Crossroads at Martineztown — 0.4 mi
• La Doctora María Dolores Gonzáles — 0.8 mi
• Graciela Olivárez — 0.9 mi
• Founding Women of Albuquerque — 1.4 mi