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.
