High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The first season of the AMC television series Hell on Wheels premiered on November 6, 2011 concluded on January 15, 2012. The series was created and produced by Joe and Tony Gayton. The series centers on the settlement that accompanied the construction of the first transcontinental railroad, referred to as "Hell on Wheels" by the company men, surveyors, support workers, laborers, prostitutes, mercenaries and others who make the mobile encampment their home. It stars Anson Mount as Cullen Bohannon, a former Confederate soldier who works as a foreman on the railroad as he tries to track down the Union soldiers who murdered his wife.