In the 1880s, a group of "Harvey Girls" – new waitresses for Fred Harvey (entrepreneur)'s pioneering chain of Fred Harvey Company restaurants – travels on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway to the western town of Sandrock, Arizona. On the trip they meet Susan Bradley (Judy Garland), who travels to the same town to marry the man whose beautiful letters she received when she answered a Personal advertisement. Unfortunately, when she arrives, the man turns out to be an "old coot" who does not at all meet her expectations – and he also wants not to get married as much as she wants not to marry him, so they agree to call it off. When she learns that someone else, the owner of the local saloon, Ned Trent (John Hodiak), wrote the letters as a joke, she confronts him and tells him off, in the process endearing herself to him.