Slaton was the Santa Fe's own town. The railroad bought the townsite on April 15, 1911 as a division point for servicing trains, laid its streets out after the plan of Washington, D.C., opened it that June and named it for O. L. Slaton, a rancher and banker who promised a bank. It became the center of the largest division on the Santa Fe system, with four daily trains at one time, and railroad families made up much of the town.
At the tracks the company built a Harvey House in 1912. Fred Harvey, a Scottish immigrant, had started his chain of railroad eating houses in 1876, staffed by the waitresses known as Harvey Girls, so that Santa Fe passengers could eat a proper meal at a station stop. The Slaton house was designed by Louis Curtiss of Kansas City in the Mission Revival style, with concrete walls a foot thick and a parapet carrying Santa Fe emblems. It is one of six Fred Harvey eating-house buildings that remain in Texas.
A local restoration turned the building into a bed and breakfast with five rooms, an events center and a museum of Slaton's railroad years, and in 2024 the Texas Historical Commission made it its 40th state historic site. The upstairs sitting room looks north over the BNSF yard, and trains still work it day and night.
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