Harvey House, Barstow — Attraction in Barstow

Located inside the historic Barstow train station, you will be able to experience a taste of what it must have been like back in the early 1900s, while traveling by train across the country. This location was built in 1911 and would serve as one of the 84 Harvey Houses operated by the Fred Harvey Company, which included restaurants, hotels and dining cars. At the time of Fred Harvey’s death in 1901, the company had 47 restaurants, 15 hotels and30 dining cars in operation and bought a certain type of upscale class to rail travel. As you enter the station, you will marvel at the size and attention to detail that once, and to some extent still does, adorned this station. There are two large dining areas, one to the right, which required one to wear a jacket and was very upscale, and to the left was the common dining area with one of the now famous Harvey dining counters, which was able to serve over 100+ people at a time. And we cannot forget about the roughly 5,000 Harvey Girls who moved out west to work at these restaurants earning $17.50 per month, plus free room, board and uniforms. Who could ever forget the 1946 musical/comedy starring Judy Garland called “The Harvey Girls”. The place is now empty and unfortunately the upstairs hotels rooms have now been converted into city offices and the NASA Goldstone Visitor Center, and there are only a few photos left of what the rooms looked like. Still, this is a great piece of history and will be...

DO NOT rent for event's its too bad because its a nice venue unfortunately crooked people run it. If you do use them make sure you take your own pictures of every space and scratch and stain before and after your event. I had an event there and almost 2 weeks of calling for status of my deposit and getting the run around now there was damage that was done almost 2 months after the event. They keep deposits and because its an outside company that handles it not the city of Barstow even though they own the building the City uses that excuse to not take responsibility. They use True Liberty Protection Services which is supposedly a business located in Hesperia. Its a city building owned by the city yet they have a company outside of Barstow run it. City of Barstow is just so dirty and deceptive and so unprofessional I am sure someone is getting kick backs for deposits not being returned or so called "damage". No walk through was done before or after the event. No phone calls from the city nor true liberty to inform me of any damage only until I started calling about my deposit. I will never rent any city owned property here in Barstow for any events after this experience just terrible....

This is a nice small railroad museum housed in a train depot built in 1911. Trains constantly roll through the large railroad yard and Amtrak stops here for pickups. There are several old passenger cars displayed in the parking lot. There are lots of memorabilia in several rooms on the ground floor of this 3-story building and there is a nice model train layout. One can operate a train using a simulator, too. In addition to the railroad museum, the second floor houses the NASA Goldstone Deep Space visitor education center. Barstow is the closest location of one of only 3 dish antenna complexes of the Goldstone Deep Space Network (DSN) used by NASA and JPL to communicate with manned and unmanned spacecraft. The other 2 locations are in Australia and Spain. There are stickers and posters to take for free. Be sure to ask the very nice guide/docent to emboss your poster with the dish antenna stamper! Finally, there is also a small route 66 museum and gift shop in another part of the building. All of this is free and Harvey House is close to the 15 interstate and, I believe, worth the time to visit. Stop by on your way in or out at Mega Tom's burgers next to McDonalds for...