Legends of the Old West - HELL ON WHEELS Ep. 3 | “Desperadoes of Every Grade”

Episode Date: June 4, 2025

After Thomas Durant lined his pockets for years, investors in the Union Pacific finally force a change in leadership. The pace of construction accelerates dramatically, but the Union Pacific now faces lawless and chaotic towns which pop up along its route. Robbery, murder, and vice of every kind plagues each town. Thanks to our sponsor, HelloFresh! To get started, check out our plan: HelloFresh.com/legends10fm Join Black Barrel+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: blackbarrel.supportingcast.fm/join Apple users join Black Barrel+ for ad-free episodes, bingeable seasons and bonus episodes. Click the Black Barrel+ banner on Apple to get started with a 3-day free trial. For more details, visit our website www.blackbarrelmedia.com and check out our social media pages. We’re @OldWestPodcast on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. On YouTube, subscribe to LEGENDS+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: hit “Join” on the Legends YouTube homepage. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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in California. The route through the mountains had been scouted by Theodore Judah, a civil engineer and visionary. Sadly, he died before a single rail was laid. But his vision carried on through his investors, the Big Four. In particular, Charles Crocker heavily involved himself in overseeing construction. By his side was James Strobridge, the construction foreman. Together, they hired an army of Chinese workers to battle freezing temperatures, deadly avalanches, and formidable granite walls. For two long, grueling years, they chiseled, hammered, and blasted their way through the mountains. And in August 1867, they defeated the Sierras

and rolled down toward the high desert of Nevada. 1,000 miles to the east, the Union Pacific had crossed the plains of Nebraska. But their progress had been delayed not just by weather or terrain, but by greed. At the center was Thomas Durant. Durant. Durant was both the vice president of the Union Pacific and the man who controlled Credit

Mobilier, the shell company that controlled the money. For several years, Durant had turned the construction of the railroad into a personal gold mine. Through Credit Mobilier, he inflated construction costs and delayed supply shipments. By slowing construction, Durant extended the life of the grift. Durant hoarded profits and made himself rich on the illusion of progress. Out on the line, the consequences were tough. Crews went unpaid for weeks, sometimes months. Workers scoured letters from home looking for

money that hadn't arrived. It was only a matter of time before the men took matters into their own hands. In late June 1867, stone cutters and grading workers walked off the job. Coincidentally, the stoppage happened at the same time as Chinese workers were going on strike in the Sierra Nevada mountains because of the increased danger of using nitroglycerin explosives. On the Union Pacific, workers demanded their overdue pay, and they refused to work until they received it. The strike spread quickly, and by July 1st, nearly all the graders had halted work. They wanted back pay, and they also wanted an increase in wages from $2 to $8 per day. Union Pacific officials responded with orders to fire the men and replace them.

At that point, most workers ended the strike and went back to work. Some couldn't afford a ticket home. Others owed debts they couldn't escape. If they left, they risked forfeiting their back pay as well as being blacklisted for future work. So they relented. They were hungry, angry, and desperate. And it wasn't long before the desperation turned violent. Over the months of construction, the crude camps that sprang up along the line began to transform. They no longer looked like makeshift work sites, but instead raucous and violent towns. When the railroad was complete, Massachusetts newspaper editor Samuel Bowles,

who had witnessed some of the scenes during construction, published a book in which he popularized a now famous nickname. In his book, Our New West, he wrote, As the railroad marched thus rapidly across the broad continent of plain and mountain, there was improvised a rough and temporary town at its every public stopping place. As this was changed every 30 or 40 days, these settlements were of the most perishable materials, canvas tents, plain board shanties, and turf hovels. Restaurant and saloon keepers, gamblers,

desperados of every grade, the vilest of men and women made up this hell on wheels as it was aptly termed. From Black Barrel Media, this is Legends of the Old West. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer, and this season is Hell on Wheels, the epic story of the transcontinental railroad. Despite countless hardships and obstacles, the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific did what many thought was impossible. They connected the American nation by rail. This is episode three, Desperados of Every Grade.

Since the Union Pacific's inception, Thomas Durant had done more to enrich himself than to advance the railroad. Durant pilfered millions from Washington, and he ran it all through his shell company, Credit Mobilier. But Durant didn't realize that the workers out on the line weren't the only ones who were cursing his name. Investors were also frustrated by delays and excuses. And the two most powerful were the Ames brothers. Oakes Ames was a congressman from Massachusetts.

His brother Oliver was a prominent manufacturer. They were brought into credit mobiliae by Durant himself. But by late 1866, as the construction crew hunkered down in North Platte, Nebraska for the winter, the Ames brothers had turned from partners to rivals. Word of Durant's endless scheming threatened the Ames brothers' reputations and investments. So, they quietly began to take control from Durant by buying out shareholders. By the spring of 1867, the Ames brothers held a controlling interest of 52% in credit mobilier. With majority control, they were able to fire Thomas Durant from his own company.

Durant was allowed to remain vice president of the Union Pacific, but his grip on power was broken. And Durant wasn't the only member of the Old Guard who was squeezed out. George Francis Train, the flamboyant promoter who had helped Durant establish Credit Mobilier, was also gone. With Durant and Train out, control of the project fell to men who actually wanted to build a transcontinental railroad. Men who had the experience to oversee an ambitious endeavor and to make sure the Union Pacific won the great race. The key additions to the team were Grenville Dodge and the Casement Brothers.

Grenville Dodge was a former Union general who had surveyed the Great Plains long before the first spike was driven. In 1859, he had recommended the Platte River Valley as the ideal route west. He knew it was a natural corridor used by Native American hunters and wagon trains for generations. Dodge had an engineer's mind and a soldier's resolve, and over the years, he earned a reputation for unmatched precision and speed.

During the Civil War, Dodge served under Union General William Tecumseh Sherman, and he was tasked with building and defending railroads deep in Confederate territory. He learned to move men and supplies across rugged landscapes under constant threat. He understood how terrain shaped logistics and how to command it. Shortly after the Civil War ended, Dodge had taken a small scouting party into the high planes along the front range of the Rockies. He was surveying the land when his group was ambushed by Cheyenne warriors.

As he and his men escaped arrows and gunfire, Dodge saw something the others missed. A narrow gap through the Laramie Mountains. Their escape route was a perfect natural path through the Rocky Mountains. A few months later, Dodge stood before the Union Pacific Board and declared, quote, That's the route. That's where we lay the rails. And the decision was made. To build through the mountains, Dodge turned to Jack Casement, another former officer who had fought in Virginia and Georgia. Casement, known to his men as General Jack, was short, wiry, and famously tough.

He ran the track-laying crews like a military operation. At his side was his brother, Dan. Dan handled logistics and kept crews supplied and on schedule. Together, the Casement brothers pushed Dodge's plan forward at a pace the Union Pacific had never seen. Dodge broke the work into overlapping divisions—graders, bridge builders, track layers—and kept them spaced like relay runners. While one team blasted rock, another laid ties. While iron rails were hammered into place, telegraph lines went up beside them.

It was controlled chaos, moving mile by mile across the prairie. With Durant sidelined and real engineers in charge, the Union Pacific surged forward. By June of 1867, the railroad had crossed more than 360 miles of Nebraska Prairie. Before long, they were out of Nebraska and into northeastern Colorado. At the rate they were going, it was obvious they would win the race. But one thing stood in their way, themselves.

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It was initially established in the 1850s along the South Platte River as a key crossing for wagon trains, mail coaches, and military supply lines. Julesburg quickly became a vital stop along the Overland Trail as settlers continued their journeys west. And its strategic location also made it favorable to the U.S. military. The military erected Fort Rankin in town. Before long, it became a flashpoint in rising tensions between Native Americans and white settlers.

On January 7, 1865, a coalition of more than a thousand Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Lakota warriors attacked Julesburg in what became known as the Battle of Julesburg. The attack wasn't random. It was revenge. Two months earlier, the US Army had killed hundreds of Native American villagers in an event that became known as the Sand Creek Massacre. During the Battle of Julesburg, Native warriors overwhelmed the soldiers at Fort Rankin and burned much of the town to the ground. Though the soldiers managed to hold the fort, the civilian settlement was destroyed. Fourteen soldiers and several civilians were killed. For months afterward,

the plains around Julesburg remained dangerous. Out of the ruins, a second version of the town rose, but it only lasted a little more than a year. Then, word spread that the Union Pacific's transcontinental route would follow the north shore of the South Platte River. And soon, settlers moved back to Julesburg. In the spring of 1867, the third iteration of Julesburg was born. And this time it was directly along the line of the railroad.

Toward the end of June, Julesburg became the end-of-track camp. Overnight, it erupted into a sprawling encampment of tents, shanties, and saloons. It quickly became known far and wide as the wickedest city in the West. In just a few short weeks, Julesburg swelled with thousands. Ironically, the majority weren't laborers. Gamblers, bar keeps, con men, prostitutes, and thieves flocked to the upstart town. They were all drawn by the scent of Union Pacific payroll and the promise of easy money. As a result, the construction workers who had fought their way across Nebraska now found themselves surrounded by chaos. A reporter named Henry Morton Stanley visited

Julesburg and described it as a place where, quote, every gambler in the Union seems to have gathered. Every house is a saloon, and every saloon is a gambling den. Not a day passes, but a dead body is found somewhere in the vicinity with pockets rifled of their contents. Saloons ran day and night, and brothels operated in the open. Fights broke out over debts, over cards, or over nothing at all. Many were fistfights, some were gunfights. There was no marshal, no sheriff, and no judge. Finally, a railroad official wired Grenville Dodge with a simple message, the town is out of control. Dodge wired back, send in Jack Casement.

Jack Casement had no patience for vice. As a Union War veteran, Casement had led troops in battle at Second Bull Run, Chattanooga, and Sherman's Atlanta campaign. He was known for his tough discipline and fearless command under fire. And as a lifelong teetotaler, Casement viewed drinking as a moral failure. He would not let lawlessness threaten the railroad's momentum. When Dodge gave the order, Casement gathered 200 of his most disciplined track layers and gave them guns. One evening at the end of June, they marched into Julesburg, determined to bring the chaotic town to heel. When Casement and his squad of armed men arrived, the gamblers,

saloonkeepers, and brothel owners scoffed. They had heard threats before and they paid little mind, but they hadn't seen Jack Casement's method of follow-through. He turned to his men and gave the order. Open fire. According to Dodge, Casement's men, quote, shot through the windows and doors, not caring whom they hit. The blast tore through the shanties and saloons. Glass shattered, woods splintered, and tragically whiskey barrels exploded. Casement's squad tore through the town,

arresting prostitutes and shooting any man who pulled a gun. By sun up the next day, Jack Casement had the town under control. When Grenville Dodge arrived to inspect the town, Casement led him to a small rise just outside the camp. There, fresh graves lined the hill. Casement turned to Dodge and said, General, they all died in their boots, and Julesburg has been quiet since. The phenomenon of the hell-on-wheels camps is generally considered to have started in North Platte, Nebraska.

The railroad crew hunkered down in North Platte for the winter of 1866-1867, and with the arrival of hundreds of workers, there followed the purveyors for profit of everything sordid and vicious. In the spring of 1867, when the workers continued west, legions of vice-peddlers trailed them. The next major hell-on-wheels camp ended up being Julesburg. Jack Casement's crackdown on the chaos of Julesburg, Colorado was a unique experience, but the chaos itself was not. Cheyenne, Wyoming was the next major destination along the line, nearly 150 miles west of Julesburg. From the

beginning, Cheyenne was intended to be a permanent settlement. It would have its share of hell-on-wheels craziness, but the town wasn't the same kind of temporary, pop-up community that existed elsewhere. Grenville Dodge chose Cheyenne to act as a division hub for the railroad company. On July 4, 1867, Nathaniel Fairbank, a Chicago businessman and early investor in the region's future, hammered the first stake of the first street corner. Fairbank had made his fortune in real estate, soap manufacturing, and speculative rail ventures. He was connected to the Union Pacific's eastern backers, and his job was to prepare the ground of Cheyenne before the rails arrived. Because Cheyenne wasn't going to be like other towns along the rail, its construction

was different too. Wide streets were laid out for freight traffic. Land was reserved for depots, roundhouses, repair shops, hotels, and civic buildings. A newspaper was established, The Cheyenne Leader. Before the first train ever rolled into town, Cheyenne earned its nickname, The Magic City of the Plains. The U.S. Army built Fort D.A. Russell nearby in September, and then two months later, the rails reached the edge of town. With them came hell on wheels,

and the magic of the Magic City vanished. Track workers, saloon keepers, gamblers, prostitutes, and grifters poured into the new town, just as they had in every other end-of-track camp before it. Within weeks, Cheyenne's population ballooned to more than 4,000 people, and with them came the familiar routine. Gambling dens operated all day and all night. Liquor flowed on every corner. Armed robbery and nighttime murders became regular. The army

at Fort D.A. Russell enforced a strict off-limits policy for its troops rather than risk sending them to town. If law and order was to come to Cheyenne, the people would have to figure it out for themselves. As winter set in, with temperatures dropping and daylight hours growing shorter, one of the darkest events of Cheyenne's early history happened in the frigid months of 1868. A group of Native American men were accused of horse theft. With little or no law in town and even less sentiment, a mob rounded up the suspects based

entirely on a rumor. The mob took the accused to a telegraph pole and hanged them. For whatever reason, Grenville Dodge and Jack Casement either couldn't or wouldn't get Cheyenne under control like they had with Julesburg. Maybe it was because the town was so much bigger than the temporary camps. It was supposed to be a permanent settlement, so maybe Dodge and Casement thought the locals could figure out law and order on their own. After all, they were focused on a pair of challenges which loomed ahead. Survey crews were charting parts of the Laramie Mountains about 30 miles west of Cheyenne.

Dodge was more concerned about logistics and topography than vigilante justice. He buried himself in telegrams and route maps and ignored Cheyenne. When asked about the city's conditions, he said, I must push west. The Indians hold the country from here to Green River, and unless I get out there, we will fail in all our plans for 1868. So the lawlessness continued in Cheyenne as the railroad pushed on. By 1868, the Union Pacific had crossed 500 miles of prairie between Omaha, Nebraska and Cheyenne, Wyoming. The Central Pacific had showcased feats of engineering during its campaign through the

Sierra Nevada Mountains, and now it was the Union Pacific's turn. At 8,242 feet above sea level, Sherman's summit marked a formidable rise in the Laramie Mountains. It's south of what is now the town of Buford, Wyoming and about 27 miles west of Cheyenne. To reach the summit, the Union Pacific had to climb nearly 600 feet from the prairie floor over a windswept plateau of granite, pine, and snow. The grade had to be carefully calculated. If it was a single degree too steep, the trains wouldn't make the climb. Too shallow, and the route would lose time and miles. It was an engineering challenge, but not a suicidal one like the crew in the Sierra Nevada's faced.

Dodge's engineers carved a path using long fills, steady cuts, and careful grading to maintain the incline. Their route followed the contours of the pass that Dodge himself had discovered years earlier when he fled an ambush by Cheyenne warriors. The place was later known as Evans Pass. In early April 1868, the Union Pacific reached the summit. It was a quiet triumph. Despite the height and elevation, the workers managed the challenge with ease. And when it was finished, there was no ceremony. Just a telegram that read, Track laid over highest railroad summit on the continent. Part of the reason why the triumph was muted was that the far more dangerous challenge of

the Laramie Mountains lay on the other side of Sherman Summit. of the Laramie Mountains lay on the other side of Sherman Summit. Dale Creek carved a deep gorge in the terrain, and the obstacle was unavoidable. To cross the canyon, Grenville Dodge's engineers would have to construct one of the largest wooden trestles in the world. For weeks, the men braved the howling wind through the canyon, wind that was strong enough to knock boxcars off the rails. On especially bad days, men had to lie flat on the planks to avoid being thrown into the ravine. At least one worker fell to his death during construction. Others refused to cross the bridge at all and chose to walk the long way around.

Day after day, workers nailed together a sprawling web of wooden beams which rose up from the canyon floor and spanned the gorge. The final product was a bridge that was 650 feet long and 150 feet high. On April 23, 1868, a train made its first attempt to cross. The train slowly crept along the rail, swaying back and forth in the wind. Workers and journalists watched in suspense as the train made it across. Instead of shouts of jubilation, the Union Pacific men breathed sighs of relief. Three days later, a newspaper in Omaha called the bridge a miracle. Over the next few weeks, workers shored up the bridge's support. Meanwhile, construction continued onward.

The line descended out of the mountains, turned north, and dropped into the Laramie River Basin, where the town of Laramie was born. By the time the railroad arrived at the town site, 500 buildings had gone up, including saloons, gambling halls, and brothels. Like Cheyenne, Laramie was hell on wheels with permanent foundations, but that foundation couldn't support the storm that followed. That foundation couldn't support the storm that followed. The earliest residents of Laramie were well aware of the violence in Julesburg and Cheyenne. To try to avoid the same situation in Laramie, a group of merchants and civic boosters formed a provisional government.

They elected a mayor, appointed officials, and established order before Laramie could turn into a typical hell-on-wheels town. Unfortunately, they weren't quick enough. The gangs in Laramie didn't bother hiding in the shadows. They threatened officials and drove out reformers. Within three weeks, every civic officer had resigned, some under direct threat of death. And it got worse. In the early summer of 1868, a train carrying Union Pacific wages pulled into the rail yard. Before the paymaster

could open his books, a group of armed men fired from behind freight cars. Railroad guards returned fire and gunshots echoed through the camp. When the smoke cleared, several men lay dead. Ultimately, the outlaws didn't get the payroll, but they proved a point. The railroad's money was vulnerable. Until then, the army stationed at nearby Fort Sanders had kept its distance. But the attempted robbery changed that. For the first time, soldiers intervened to support Union Pacific's civil authority. Soldiers guarded paymasters, escorted freight, and protected assets.

But even soldiers couldn't quell the town's violence. In August, local railroad men and merchants formed a vigilance committee. They arrested and hanged a known outlaw who called himself the Kid. The Kid's gang retaliated and shot up parts of the town. For nearly two months, the outlaws effectively ran Laramie. Then the vigilantes struck back hard. On the night of October 29th, 1868,

500 armed men launched a coordinated attack on all outlaw strongholds. The Bell of the West Saloon, infamous for housing gamblers and gunmen, became a war zone. When the shooting stopped, five men were dead and 15 were wounded. Four more were hanged from telegraph poles. By morning, Laramie belonged to the vigilantes, who were technically the good guys at that point in time in the raw frontier town of Laramie, Wyoming.

With that, Laramie staggered into uneasy order, and as always, the Union Pacific rolled on. With Sherman Summit and Dale Creek Bridge behind them, the wheels kept pushing west, into the hostile territory that had worried Grenville Dodge more than the chaos in Cheyenne. West of Laramie, the railroad faced the Red Desert, the Great Divide Basin, the Alkali Flats around Bitter Creek, and the dry plateaus near the towns of Green River and Evanston. From a distance, the country looked empty of everything except sagebrush and dust. It was a similar scenario to the one that was faced by generations of Texas Rangers

who followed Comanche warriors into El Llano Estacado, the Staked Plains of far west Texas. The land looked empty and unbroken, but it wasn't. In Wyoming, the supposedly barren lands were the domain of the Northern Cheyenne, the Arapaho, and the Lakota. To those nations, the railroad was an advancing threat. Back in Nebraska, conflicts with Native Americans had been somewhat minimal because most had already been displaced or confined to reservations. But in Wyoming, the railroad was going to run through territory

that was still under Native American control. White settlements were sprinkled throughout the area, but there were few and far between. In the summer of 1868, as Laramie descended into chaos, a surveyor named Percy Brown led a small team to a place called Bitter Creek, about 170 miles west of Laramie. It was hot, dry country, the kind of place filled with rattlesnakes in the brush and, as Percy Brown learned, Lakota warriors on the ridgelines. While Brown and his team nailed wooden stakes into the ground to plot their course, 300 warriors appeared on a hill above them. The warriors greatly

outnumbered the small survey crew, and they attacked with speed. Brown and his men tried to run and then fight, but the skirmish lasted less than 30 minutes. When Grenville Dodge's cavalrymen arrived, they found three members of the survey crew dead, including Percy Brown. The others had scattered or been captured.

The Lakota took the survey equipment and left the stakes broken on the ground. Brown's death was both tragic and a blow to the railroad. Without his data, the land had to be re-surveyed, which halted forward progress for more than a week. And that was just one of many times Union Pacific surveyors ran up against Native American warriors. Farther west, an engineer named Samuel Reed and a party of men were ambushed near the Continental Divide.

Reed and his engineers laid low over the backs of their horses as they galloped away from the attack, and they were lucky to escape. Grenville Dodge was also lucky to survive an ambush. On a personal inspection trip through the southwest corner of Wyoming, his group came under fire. Dodge wasn't hit, but his escort suffered two injuries. They managed to escape and make it to Fort Fred Steel. When he arrived, Dodge

demanded a stronger cavalry presence along the route. It was clear that the railroad was going to have to fight for every inch of ground. Throughout that summer, grading crews and track layers worked under constant threat. The attacks weren't constant, but the threat was always there and the exposed terrain made workers visible from miles away. Survey stakes vanished overnight. Supply wagons disappeared on side trails. Telegraph wires were cut and twisted into braids. In one case, a lone telegraph operator was found dead and mutilated. Military reinforcements trickled in from Fort Bridger and Fort Steele, but the distances

were enormous and the numbers were thin. The Army had to patrol hundreds of miles with limited manpower. Meanwhile, engineers began constructing small wooden blockhouses with rifle ports every few miles. The buildings were essentially crude forts for shelter during attacks. And yet, none of the threats or attacks stopped the railroad. While some crews refused to advance without an armed escort, the majority of Jack Casement's crews pushed forward. the majority of Jack Casement's crews pushed forward. Grenville Dodge coordinated from the front,

and slowly, mile by mile, the rails crept westward toward the Utah border. By the fall of 1868, word had spread that the Central Pacific was out of the Sierra Nevada Mountains and gaining momentum. As the Union Pacific entered Mormon territory, the Central Pacific entered the Nevada desert. There was less than a year left in the great race to complete the transcontinental railroad,

but both crews would have to endure the brutally hot and dry conditions to reach their junction. Next time on Legends of the Old West, the Central Pacific Railroad has conquered the mountains and moved into the flatland of the Nevada desert. The desert has new tortures in store for the crewmen who survived avalanches and sub-zero temperatures. And then the race becomes the priority when Charles Crocker decides he wants his crew to beat the construction record of the Union Pacific crew. That's next week on week to receive new episodes. They receive the entire season to binge all at once with no commercials. And they also receive exclusive bonus episodes. Sign up now through the link in the show notes or on our website, blackbarrelmedia.com.

Memberships are just five dollars per month. This series was researched and written by Matthew Kearns. It was produced by Joe Gera. Original music by Rob Valier. I'm Chris Wimmer. Thanks for listening.