You've probably seen Cullen Bohannon scowl his way through five seasons of grit, mud, and gunpowder. It makes for great television. But if you're a history nerd or just someone who stumbled upon the AMC series on a streaming binge, you've likely wondered about the "Common" from Hell on Wheels. In the show, the Common is basically the heartbeat of the mobile city. It’s where the tents cluster, where the whiskey flows, and where the most desperate people on the continent tried to carve out a life while the Union Pacific pushed west.
It was a mess. Honestly, the real-life versions of these settlements were even more chaotic than what you saw on screen. While the show focuses on a fictionalized version of the Transcontinental Railroad's construction, the "Common" wasn't just a set piece; it was a socio-economic pressure cooker. People from all over the world—Irish immigrants, formerly enslaved people, Civil War veterans, and Chinese laborers—all collided in these temporary, lawless hubs.
Let's get one thing straight: the show takes a lot of liberties. That’s fine. It’s a drama. But the real history of the people living in the Common areas of these "Hell on Wheels" towns is a story of extreme survival and a very specific kind of American madness.
What Most People Get Wrong About the Common From Hell on Wheels
The biggest misconception? That these towns were organized. In the show, the Common looks like a dirty but somewhat functional village. In reality, places like North Platte, Julesburg, and Benton were terrifying. When the railroad reached a "terminal" point for the winter or while waiting for bridge supplies, a town would spring up in forty-eight hours. We’re talking about thousands of people living in canvas tents with dirt floors.
There was no sanitation. None. Imagine the smell of thousands of horses, unwashed humans, and open latrines baking in the Nebraska sun. The Common wasn't just a place to grab a drink at Thomas Durant’s expense; it was a breeding ground for cholera and dysentery.
Also, the social hierarchy was brutal. You had the "respectable" railroad officials living in private cars or fortified buildings, and then you had the Common—the shifting mass of laborers, gamblers, and "frail sisterhood" (as the newspapers then called prostitutes). It wasn't a community; it was a transaction. Everything had a price, and usually, that price was marked up 400% because where else were you going to go?
The Real People Who Populated the Tents
Cullen Bohannon is a composite of many men, but the people in the Common were very real. Take the "Irish Terriers." These were the backbone of the Union Pacific. Many were veterans of the Union or Confederate armies who found themselves with no homes to return to after 1865. They lived in the Common because it was cheap—or at least, it was the only option.
Then you had the figures like Jack Casement and his brother Dan. While they were the bosses, they spent an incredible amount of time in the thick of the Common, managing the chaos. History tells us that Jack Casement used a whip and a heavy hand to keep the Common from descending into total anarchy.
Life in the Canvas City
Life was loud. And short.
A journalist for the Chicago Tribune who visited one of these mobile towns in 1867 described it as a "perpetual carnival of vice." He wasn't exaggerating for clicks. Because there was no formal law—no sheriffs, no judges—justice in the Common was usually handled by a "Vigilance Committee." If you stole from a neighbor’s tent in the Common, you weren't going to jail. You were likely going to the nearest telegraph pole with a rope around your neck.
It’s easy to look at the show and think the violence was dialed up for TV. If anything, it might have been dialed down. In the real Benton, Wyoming, which existed for only a few months in 1868, the murder rate was astronomical. It’s estimated that over 100 people were killed in gunfights or brawls in that tiny Common area in a single summer.
The Economics of a Moving Hell
The Common existed because of the "Followers." These weren't railroad employees. They were the entrepreneurs of the underworld.
When the tracks moved, the Common moved.
Imagine disassembling an entire town, loading the timber frames and canvas onto flatcars, and setting it all up again 50 miles down the line. This happened repeatedly. The business owners—the saloon keepers and gamblers—knew that the laborers had nothing to spend their money on except vice.
The Union Pacific paid in cash or scrip. On payday, the Common became a vacuum. The money flowed out of the workers' pockets and into the hands of the "hell-on-wheels" kings. It was a predatory ecosystem. The show depicts this well with characters like the Swede or Durant, but the sheer scale of the grift was legendary.
The Role of Women in the Common
The show gives us characters like Eva and Louise, but the reality for women in the Common was often much grimmer. Most women in these towns were there out of sheer economic necessity. Some were "laundresses"—which was often a euphemism, though many did actually do the grueling work of cleaning the filth-caked clothes of thousands of men. Others were business owners in their own right, running boarding houses or small shops, but they had to be tougher than the men to survive.
Why the "Hell on Wheels" Legend Still Matters
We're obsessed with this era because it represents the rawest version of the American Dream—or Nightmare. The Common was the place where the old world died and the new one was born, literally built on top of the graves of those who couldn't handle the pace.
Historians like Stephen E. Ambrose, in his book Nothing Like It in the World, highlight how these camps were essential to the speed of construction. Without the "services" (as questionable as they were) provided in the Common, the men would have likely deserted in even greater numbers. The Common provided the only release from the back-breaking, soul-crushing labor of driving spikes into the earth.
But we have to talk about the cost. The expansion of the railroad and the footprint of the Common camps meant the systematic destruction of the Plains Indian way of life. The show touches on this, but the reality was a series of violent skirmishes and a retreating frontier that left the indigenous populations with nowhere to go. The Common wasn't just a camp; it was the vanguard of an empire.
Surviving the Common: A Reality Check
If you were transported back to the Common of a real Hell on Wheels town, you probably wouldn't last a week.
First, the water. Unless you were drinking whiskey or boiled coffee, you were taking a massive gamble with your life. The "Common" water supply was usually whatever creek was nearby, which was also where the livestock drank and defecated.
Second, the weather. The Great Plains are not kind. In the summer, the tents became ovens. In the winter, the wind would whip through the Common with enough force to rip the canvas to shreds. There was no insulation. There was just the communal warmth of too many people in too small a space.
Third, the sheer noise. The construction never really stopped. The ringing of hammers, the shouting of foremen, and the constant steam whistles of the locomotives created a soundscape that would drive a modern person insane.
How to Explore the Real History Today
If you’re a fan of the show and want to see where the real Common once stood, you can’t exactly visit a town called "Hell on Wheels." It was a nickname, not a post office address. However, several locations hold the ghosts of these camps.
- Cheyenne, Wyoming: This was perhaps the most famous "Hell on Wheels" town. It actually survived and became a major city, but in 1867, it was the wildest place on earth. The local museum has incredible records of the early camp days.
- Laramie, Wyoming: Another former terminal town where the transition from tent city to permanent settlement happened almost overnight.
- The Union Pacific Museum (Council Bluffs, Iowa): This is the holy grail for railroad buffs. They have the actual photographs of the camps—grainy, black-and-white shots that show the sprawling Common areas. You’ll notice the show got the "look" of the tents remarkably right.
- Promontory Summit, Utah: The end of the line. While the "Common" here was more of a celebration site eventually, the surrounding camps during the final push were legendary for their intensity.
Actionable Insights for the History Buff
Don't just watch the show; dig into the primary sources. If you want to understand the Common, look for the letters of the soldiers who guarded the tracks. Read the diaries of the surveyors.
The most important thing to remember is that the "Common" was a human story. It wasn't just a backdrop for a protagonist's revenge arc. It was thousands of individual lives, most of whom were just trying to get through the day without catching a bullet or a fever.
- Check out the "Digital Public Library of America": Search for "Union Pacific construction camps." You'll find digitized photos that show the actual scale of the tents.
- Read "The Associate" by John J. Robinson: It provides a much more granular look at the day-to-day operations of these camps than a TV script ever could.
- Visit a "Living History" event: Places like Kearney, Nebraska, often host events that recreate the 1860s railroad experience. It’s the best way to realize how heavy those hammers actually were and how small those tents felt.
The Common from Hell on Wheels was a temporary purgatory for the men and women who built the modern world. It was dirty, dangerous, and deeply unfair. But without that chaotic mess of tents and mud, the golden spike would never have been driven. It was the necessary, ugly engine of progress. Honestly, it’s a miracle anyone survived it at all.
To get a true sense of the scale, look into the "End of Track" maps provided by the National Archives. They show the progression of the camps and how the "Common" would literally vanish from one spot and reappear 30 miles west in a matter of days. That level of logistical nightmare is something the show only scratches the surface of. Next time you watch an episode, look past the main characters at the extras in the background—the people in the Common—because their real-life counterparts were the ones who actually paid the price for the railroad.