The Hobo Code was a shared visual language used by itinerant workers, okies, bohemians, and some famous blues artists in America. In the late 1800s, people (usually men) hopped onto trains and headed into the American West looking for work wherever they could find it. These people, called hobos, developed and used a system of pictograms to leave notes for other hobos passing through. Whether it was to signal that water and food was available in an area, or to alert Hobos of police enforcement, this shared language strengthened a marginalized community. Not all hobos were men. The documentation is sparse, but there are some records of women hopping trains. As some of them were fleeing situations of domestic violence, for them, the hobo code was a lifeline for finding sanctuary in unfamiliar towns and cities. As more people took to traveling the train lines looking for work, a worker’s union emerged along with a publication and what were known as hobo colleges. During and after WWII, there were far fewer itinerant workers and the need for the hobo code declined, but it didn’t go away. It evolved into some of the train graffiti we see today.

TIMELINE

1865 - Civil War ends and discharged soldiers are looking for work becoming the original itinerant laborers.
1869 - Transcontinental Railroad is completed by immigrant laborers which creates a source of transportation for transient workers (hobos and tramps).
1873 - The Panic of 1873 forces large amounts of stable workers onto the road in search of new jobs.
1880s - “Hobo” becomes a formal group to distinguish themselves from tramps.
1890 - The Hobo Code begins to spread across different parts of the west.
1900s - The term Hobohemia becomes a part of white hobo culture
1905 - Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) founded.
1909 - The Little Red Songbook was published by the IWW in Spokane Washington.
1910-1920 - New Immigration (European immigrants join migratory labor and add to hobo population).
1920s - African American hobos and itinerant works express hardship through music which leads to the start of the blues.
1929 - Stock market crashes leading to the Great Depression (Hobohemia Golden Age)
1930s - Dust Bowl storms displace midwest families and lead to more migration to the west.
1940s - World War II begins, allowing workers to find stable war industrial jobs marking the end of the hobohemian era.

REFERENCES

Allsop, K. (1967). Hard travellin’; the hobo and his history. New American Library.

Clayton, O. (2023). Vagabonds, Tramps, and Hobos. In Vagabonds, Tramps, and Hobos: The Literature and Culture of U.S. Transiency 1890–1940 (pp. i–i). half-title-page, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Dreyfuss, H. (1972). Symbol sourcebook : an authoritative guide to international graphic symbols (First edition.). McGraw-Hill.

Dyl, J. (2014). Transience, Labor, and Nature: Itinerant Workers in the American West. International Labor and Working Class History, 85(85), 97–117.

Hall, J. (2010). Sisters of the Road?: The Construction of Female Hobo Identity in the Autobiographies of Ethel Lynn, Barbara Starke, and “Box-Car” Bertha Thompson. Women’s Studies, 39(3), 215–237. https://doi.org/10.1080/00497871003595828

Hobo Communications: A Brief History of Hobos and Their Signs. (2021, August 4). National Security Agency/Central Security Service. https://www.nsa.gov/History/National-Cryptologic-Museum/Exhibits-Artifacts/Exhibit-View/Article/2718897/hobo-communications-a-brief-history-of-hobos-and-their-signs/

https://www.folkschool.org/author/cory. (2017, January 13). What’s a Hobo Nickel? JCCFS. https://www.folkschool.org/2017/01/13/whats-hobo-nickel/

NPR. (2016, June 11). Anthropologist Discovers 100-Year-Old Graffiti By “America’s Most Famous Hobo.” NPR. https://www.npr.org/2016/06/11/481695146/anthropologist-discovers-100-year-old-graffiti-by-americas-most-famous-hobo

Liungman, C. G. (1991). Dictionary of symbols. ABC-CLIO.

Joffe-Block, J. (2025, November 8). Immigration agents have new technology to identify and track people. NPR. https://www.npr.org/2025/11/08/nx-s1-5585691/ice-facial-recognition-immigration-tracking-spyware

Volk, T. M. (2001). Little Red Songbooks: Songs for the labor force of America. Journal of Research in Music Education, 49(1), 33-48. https://libproxy.uco.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/little-red-songbooks-songs-labor-force-america/docview/214489163/se-2

Wanderer, J. J. (2001). Hobo Signs: Embodied Metaphors and Metonymies. American Journal of Semiotics, 17(4), 131–146. https://doi.org/10.5840/ajs200117476