'Traveling kids' in a boxcar, riding from Chicago, Illinois to St Paul, Minnesota.

Vagrancy, the phenomenon of nomadic outcasts, is not a new story. For one-and-a-half centuries, hobos living beyond the traditional American Dream have traversed the American landscape, in hope of finding work, adventure, and freedom. Today, ‘traveling kids’ — communities of young nomadic individuals — cross the US by hopping freight trains and hitchhiking for months or years at a time. Nowadays, living free in America is not as challenging by historical vagrant standards. Traveling kids live off the waste and kindness of American society and hail from a variety of backgrounds. Many are runaways, living nomadically out of necessity, while others are born middle class, but have rebelled against life’s expectations.