3. The Water Tower/ Trainhopping

Before diesel locomotives, trains ran on steam.

And steam required water.

A locomotive climbing the Siskiyou Mountains could consume thousands of gallons during a single journey. Water towers like this one were essential infrastructure, allowing trains to refill before continuing north toward Oregon or south into California. For railroad workers, these stops were simply part of the daily rhythm of operations. For many travelers, however, places like this represented something else entirely: a pause between where they had been and where they hoped to go.

Railroad towns became crossroads. People arrived looking for work, for opportunity, for family, or simply for a new beginning. Some stayed. Others continued on. The rails connected distant places, but they also connected people whose paths might never have crossed otherwise.

As long as there have been railroads in America, there have been people riding them in ways the railroad companies never intended.

The culture we now call hobo culture emerged alongside the rapid expansion of the rail network in the late nineteenth century. Traveling workers rode freight trains between harvests, construction projects, logging camps, and railroad jobs. For many, mobility was not a form of recreation but a practical response to economic reality. Yet over time, a distinct culture developed around life on the rails, complete with its own traditions, stories, music, and sense of community.

What survives in popular memory is often the romance of the open road—or in this case, the open rail line. The reality was usually more complicated. Life on the rails could be dangerous, uncomfortable, and uncertain. Yet for many riders, it also offered a rare sense of freedom and independence. The rails provided access to a larger world, and for some people, that possibility was worth the risks.

The culture that emerged around trainhopping was carried less through books than through stories. Riders shared knowledge with one another about routes, rail yards, seasonal work, and friendly towns. Around campfires, in temporary camps near the tracks, and aboard freight cars rattling across the continent, stories were exchanged and passed along. Like folklore everywhere, those stories changed with each telling.

09:30–10:38

Deb Harton: "Roadhog was a hobo.

A lot of the people here ended up here because they rode the trains.

Roadhog, in the 1980s, I believe, was crowned King of the Hobos.

The hobos have a huge convention back east every year.

Roadhog cared for our cemetery, lived in a little shack, and cared for our cemetery in Dunsmuir for many, many years."

Roadhog's story illustrates something that happened in railroad towns across North America. People arrived intending to move on, only to become part of the communities they encountered. The boundary between traveler and resident was often more fluid than it first appeared.

The tradition itself never entirely disappeared. While modern freight railroads are very different from those of a century ago, trainhopping culture remains alive today. Contemporary rail riders continue to travel across the continent, gathering at events, sharing stories, making music, creating art, and preserving traditions that stretch back generations. Here in Northern California, organizations like the Black Butte Center for Railroad Culture have helped document and celebrate these histories, recognizing rail-riding culture as an important part of the broader railroad story.

Deb Harton: "The railroad was of vital importance for every aspect of folks' lives.

It opened up worlds."

In many ways, that simple observation helps explain why the culture of rail-riding has endured for so long.

The railroad carried lumber, livestock, mail, and manufactured goods. It carried presidents, soldiers, immigrants, and tourists. It connected towns to cities and regions to one another. But it also carried dreams of elsewhere—of distant horizons, new opportunities, and unexplored possibilities.

Standing beside this water tower, it is worth imagining the countless travelers who once passed through Dunsmuir. Some arrived with a destination already in mind. Others were following little more than a rumor, a recommendation, or a sense of curiosity about what lay beyond the next mountain range.

Their stories rarely appeared in official railroad records. Yet they remain part of the living culture of the rails, passed from one generation of riders to the next, carried across the continent alongside the trains themselves.