Dining on the Rails March 2025: La Posada Blueberry Muffins and Mary Colter

Happy March! For Women’s History Month, we are featuring Mary Colter, chief architect and interior designer for the Fred Harvey Company. We are also featuring an accompanying Super Chief Cook Book recipe-La Posada blueberry muffins.

Figure 1 Mary Colter, circa 1888.

Mary Colter was born in Pennsylvania in 1869. Colter grew up in Colorado, Texas, and Minnesota. During her time in Colorado and Texas, Colter became interested in Native cultures and their art. According to Shirley Burman in her book Sisters of the Iron Road, Colter purchased many Native handcrafted goods, and even when she was encouraged to throw her collected goods away (due to endemic illnesses Natives suffered from) she kept and treasured them.

Figure 2 Sisters of the Iron Road cover by Shirley Burman

Colter attended the California School of Design and was interested in Mission Revival architecture and Arts and Crafts, which was an artistic movement that began in Britain in response to the Industrial Age. It was known for using native materials and hand craftmanship. There was a natural relationship to that artistic movement and arts created by Native communities who already used that method of craftsmanship in their own artistry.

Colter began working for the Harvey Company after vacationing to the American West in 1902.  Fred Harvey was known for creating a premier dining experience for passengers on the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad (AT&SF), putting his Harvey House restaurants along the line. The services with the Harvey Girls were impeccable, and the food was premier. Part of the high-quality dining experience Harvey strove to provide, included the design of the restaurants, which is where Mary Colter came in.

Figure 3 Fred Harvey, founder of the Harvey Company.

AT&SF and the Fred Harvey Company were not just concerned with the food element, though that played a pivotal role in their company’s branding, but rather the entire southwestern experience for passengers who were traveling by their railroad. They strove to create a unique cultural element for passengers, heavily playing into the southwestern cultural influences of the area. Harvey hired local Native artisans to sell their wares, and Colter’s first task was to design a building to house them.

Figure 4 Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe (AT&SF) route map, 1891.

Colter designed buildings that reflected styles from the Ancestral Puebloans who lived in the region. Colter spent a long time traveling to different areas to study the ancient ruins the Puebloans left behind and heavily took inspiration from those designs in her structures.  The buildings she designed melded into the natural southwestern landscape perfectly. A fitting example of this is the Desert View Watchtower that she designed for the Harvey Company in the Grand Canyon National Park. This building, along with the others she designed at the Grand Canyon, remain today.

Figure 5 Desert View Watchtower, designed by Mary Colter in 1932.

During her 46-year tenure with the Harvey Company, Colter designed 23 buildings including restaurants, hotels, and train stations. She was even commissioned to create a design for railroad china when the AT&SF introduced the Super Chief in 1936. This first-class Pullman passenger train was heavily influenced by Native cultures, even down to its name. Colter was commissioned to design the dishware to reflect those Native influences. She took inspiration from the Mimbres, a prehistoric culture that left behind stunning examples of pottery. She called her design Mimbreño, and it was in use from 1936 through 1970.

Figure 6 Mimbreño china designed by Mary Colter.

Though Colter played a pivotal role in the history of the Harvey Company and was a pioneering architect in a field full of men, it is important to acknowledge that many of her designs, along with the AT&SF, and Harvey Company, are considered culturally appropriative today. Colter had an abiding respect for Native cultures and communities and attempted to reflect that respect by using those influences in her work. Despite that, the Harvey Company and AT&SF existed at a time when the United States federal government was actively attempting to eradicate Native populations, and banning many of them from their own cultures, while these companies profited from their designs. Though the Harvey Company did allow many Natives to sell their own art, and encouraged them to showcase their culture, it still reflects a complicated dynamic that we must acknowledge today.

Before we share the recipe, let’s talk about the history of blueberries. Blueberries are native to North America and were used by Native cultures both for food and for medicinal purposes. They weren’t cultivated in the United States until the beginning of the 20th century when Elizabeth White offered the use of some of the land on her cranberry farm to USDA’s botanist Frank Coville who was interested in commercially cultivating the fruit. Coville later become the Chief Botanist of the USDA.

Figure 7 Elizabeth White offered land for blueberry cultivation.

Muffins themselves have been around for centuries, but weren’t introduced to North America until the 19th century. The development of baking powder in the same century made the muffins we know today, with the American version being a sweeter kind than the English one. As tins were developed to make muffins, they too, became commercialized and blueberries and muffins became a good combination.

Figure 8 La Posada Hotel, considered to be one of Mary Colter’s greatest achievements.

We hope you enjoyed our brief history on Mary Colter and blueberry muffins. Today’s recipe comes from La Posada Hotel in Winslow, Arizona. La Posada, which opened in May of 1930, was designed by Mary Colter. She designed everything from the architecture of the hotel to the outfits worn by the staff there. La Posada was considered Colter’s crowning achievement in architecture. If you try the recipe, please be sure to let us know in the comments below or on our social media accounts. If you haven’t seen Hidden from History: A Century of Women in Railroading yet, be sure to come to the Colorado Railroad Museum to check out the important contributions women made to railroading from the 1870s through the 1970s, while the exhibit is open through August of 2025. You can even see examples of the Mimbreño china that Colter designed.

Figure 9 Super Chief Cook Book cover

Blueberry Muffins—La Posada
La Posada Hotel, Winslow, Arizona
Guy Falconer, Baker

Ingredients
2/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup shortening
2 eggs, beaten
2 cups sifted all-purpose flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
2/3 cup milk
1 cup frozen blueberries, thawed

Directions
Cream together sugar and shortening. Add eggs, mix well. Sift together flour, baking powder and salt. Add alternately with milk to creamed mixture. Blend in blueberries. Fill greased muffin pans one-half full and bake in moderately hot oven (400° F.) 15 minutes. Yield: 1 ½ dozen muffins.