Waynoka Santa Fe Depot and Harvey House

1910 brick railway depot and Harvey House, now an aviation and railroad museum

A pair of substantial brick buildings from 1910, built when Waynoka was an important division point on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway. The Harvey House — one of the chain of railway restaurants that Fred Harvey ran across the Southwest — fed travellers stepping off long-distance trains. The waitresses, the "Harvey Girls," lived in dormitories upstairs.

Both buildings now house museums. The Waynoka Air Rail Museum tells the story of the brief, strange period in 1929 when Waynoka was a stop on the first transcontinental air-rail service, with passengers transferring from Ford Tri-Motor aircraft to overnight Pullman trains. There's also a railroad museum with rolling stock outside.

things to do museum architecture
A story
In the late 1920s Transcontinental Air Transport used Waynoka as a stopover on its coast-to-coast air-rail service: passengers flew from Columbus to Waynoka by day, slept in the Harvey House, then continued by Santa Fe train to Clovis, New Mexico, where they boarded another plane. Charles Lindbergh helped plan the route.