page_title: Hobo
section_title: Hobo signs and graffiti
hierarchical_section_title: Hobo / Culture / Hobo signs and graffiti
caption_attribution_description: English: Signs and symbols used by hobos for communication. This photo was taken at the National Cryptologic Museum.
context_page_description: A hobo is a migrant worker or homeless vagrant, especially one who is impoverished. The term originated in the Western—probably Northwestern—United States around 1890. Unlike a "tramp", who works only when forced to, and a "bum", who does not work at all, a "hobo" is a traveling worker.
context_section_description: Almost from the beginning of the existence of hoboes, as soon as the 1870s, it has been reported that hoboes communicated with each other by way of a system of cryptic "hobo signs," which would be chalked in prominent or relevant places to clandestinely alert future hoboes about important local information. Many listings of these symbols have been made. A few symbols include (see also photo at right):
  A triangle with hands, signifying that the homeowner has a gun.
  A horizontal zigzag signifying a barking dog.
  A circle with two parallel arrows meaning "Get out fast," as hobos are not welcome in the area.
  A cat signifying that a kind lady lives here.
  Reports of hoboes using these symbols appeared in newspapers and popular books straight through the Depression, and continue to turn up in American popular culture; for example, John Hodgman's book The Areas of My Expertise features a section on hobo signs listing signs found in newspapers of the day as well as several whimsical ones invented by Hodgman, and the Free Art and Technology Lab released a QR Hobo Code, with a QR stenciler, in July 2011. Displays on hobo signs have been exhibited in the Steamtown National Historic Site at Scranton, Pennsylvania, operated by the National Park Service, and in the National Cryptologic Museum in Annapolis Junction, Maryland, and Webster's Third New International Dictionary supplies a listing of hobo signs under the entry for "hobo".
  
  Despite an apparently strong record of authentication, however, there is doubt as to whether hobo signs were ever actually in practical use by hoboes. The alternative hypothesis is that the signs were invented early on by a writer or writers seeking to add to the fantastical mythos that began to surround hoboes soon after they first appeared; this fabrication, then, was perpetuated and embellished by writers over the years, aided occasionally by hoboes willing to make up a colorful story or pose for a photo. Several hoboes during the days that the signs were reportedly most in use asserted that they were in fact a "popular fancy" or "a fabrication". Nels Anderson, who both hoboed himself and studied hoboes extensively for a University of Chicago master's thesis, wrote in 1932,
  Another merit of the book [Godfrey Irwin's 1931 American Tramp and Underworld Slang] is that the author has not subscribed to the fiction that American tramps have a sign language, as so many professors are wont to believe.
  Though newspapers in the early and peak days of hoboing (1870s through the Depression) printed photos and drawings of hoboes leaving these signs, no known photos exist showing hobo signs found in situ where they would have served a practical purpose, leaving open the possibility that all the photographs published were staged in order to add color to the story.
  
  Nonetheless, it is certain that hoboes have used some graffiti to communicate, in the form of "monikers" (sometimes "monicas"). These generally consisted simply of a road name (moniker), a date, and the direction the hobo was heading then. This would be written in a prominent location where other hoboes would see it. Jack London, in recounting his hobo days, wrote,
  Water-tanks are tramp directories. Not all in idle wantonness do tramps carve their monicas, dates, and courses. Often and often have I met hoboes earnestly inquiring if I had seen anywhere such and such a "stiff" or his monica. And more than once I have been able to give the monica of recent date, the water-tank, and the direction in which he was then bound. And promptly the hobo to whom I gave the information lit out after his pal. I have met hoboes who, in trying to catch a pal, had pursued clear across the continent and back again, and were still going.
  The use of monikers persists to this day, although since the rise of cell phones a moniker is more often used simply to "tag" a train car or location. Some moniker writers have tagged train cars extensively; one who tagged under the name Bozo Texino during the 1970s and ’80s estimated that in one year ("where I went overboard") he marked over 3
caption: Key to a few hobo signs, displayed at the National Cryptologic Museum
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