The teenagers riding the rails during the Great Depression accounted for 1/16 (250,000) of a jobless army that numbered four million. These itinerants crisscrossed the U.S. on the Pennsylvania, Atchison, Great Northern, Union Pacific, and Southern Pacific railroads, as well as other vast rail networks.

In 1932, Southern Pacific agents ejected 683,457 trespassers from the company's trains. The price of trespassing on the rails was high: The Interstate Commerce Commission recorded 5,962 trespassers killed and injured in the first 10 months of 1932.