1863–1869: Union Pacific built west (blue line), Central Pacific built east (red line) and Western Pacific built the last leg (green line) to complete the first transcontinental railroad to the Pacific. Route to finish the Transcontinental Railroad through the west. Every man goes armed every man and every woman drinks every one of both sexes gambles, and, of course, fights, are frequent and murders not uncommon.” There were sixty woman in the town, not one of them virtuous, all of them belonging to the vilest grade of criminal life.Įvery night in the large tents (they are a hundred feet long by sixty wide) there are lewd dances, and drinking and gambling, and every variety of obscene and criminal indulgences. Every other tent was either a gambling den, or a ‘drinking saloon,’ or a dancing hall – with adjoining chambers that go down to hell. “The history of any one of these places is the history of them all … It was entirely formed of large tents. Of these places, the Alexandria Gazette described them in 1868 in the following manner:
It also formed mushrooming municipalities and as town after town arose as the track advanced, each one of these Hell on Wheels was livelier, wickeder, and more reckless that the preceding one. “Hell on Wheels” was an itinerant tent city that included a collection of gambling houses, dance halls, saloons, and brothels that moved from place to place in the 1860s as it followed the army of Union Pacific railroad workers who were constructing the First Transcontinental Railroad in North America.
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