Hobo moniker
A hobo’s road name, written with the date and an arrow for the direction of travel on water tanks, bridges and stations. Unlike the chalk signs, these marks survive in numbers.
Meaning
Josiah Flynt, in Tramping with Tramps (1899), told readers they could find tramps’ names registered on the water tanks and other railway property near them, where tramps “sign”, each name joined to the tramp’s birthplace. A-No. 1, the best-known of them, called it the “name-de-road”, left by every tramp on stations, outhouses and water tanks “just as an artist places his signature in the corner of a finished picture”. The Historic Graffiti Society has recorded more than 1,000 of these marks: a moniker, the date and the direction of travel.
Origin and history
In 2016 Smithsonian Magazine reported that the anthropologist Susan Phillips had found marks etched with grease pencils and knife points under a bridge on the Los Angeles River, among them the name A-No. 1 with small arrows pointing upriver and a date of around 13 August 1914. She read the arrows as “I was here on this date and I’m going upriver.” Whether A-No. 1 scratched the name himself or someone used it cannot be known. Our drawing is lettered after that mark.
Monikers and the chalk signs
The monikers are the part of the story no one doubts. Even writers who question how widely the pictured signs were used, such as 99% Invisible, find “a lot of evidence of ‘tramp writing’”: a name and a direction of travel. A newspaper quoted by the Historic Graffiti Society put it plainly: the hobo “leaves no private marks on doors” where he is fed, but on waiting rooms, water tanks and bridges he leaves his name, date and destination. The society has never found a single pictured sign among the marks it has recorded.
Read next
- Next in Hobo symbolsKind woman lives hereA cat drawn in chalk, reported to mean that a kind-hearted woman lived in the house.
- The same shape in Elder Futhark runesKaunanThe Elder Futhark rune for the “k” sound. Its Norse name, kaun, means an ulcer or sore; in England the same rune was called cen, a torch.
See also
Leave quickly, Food given here, Religious talk for a meal, Care if you are sick, Gentleman lives here, Dog here.
Sources
- Tramping with Tramps: Studies and Sketches of Vagabond Life, Josiah Flynt, Century Co., New York, 1899, Project Gutenberg, Part II, ch. I, The American Tramp
- The Curse of Tramp Life, A-No. 1 (Leon Ray Livingston), A-No. 1 Publishing Co., Cambridge Springs, Pa., 1912 (scan on the Internet Archive), Internet Archive, ch. XII
- After a Century, an Anthropologist Picked up the Trail of the “Hobo King”, Danny Lewis, 6 June 2016, Smithsonian Magazine
- Hobo Signs: Code of the Road?, 2 February 2020, updated 12 February 2022, The Historic Graffiti Society, Our Thoughts & Conclusions
- Unpacking Hobo Codes: The Pictographic Language of Train-Hopping Nomads, 99% Invisible, Somewhere Between Myth and Reality
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from arrows or letters and numbers.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 9, 2026. How we research
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