John Henry Park is on WV12/WV3, about a mile from Talcott, WV. Talcott calls itself the “Home of the John Henry Legend” and, in the week after 4th July, a number of local events are held commemorating the legend, including a parade, museum display and fireworks.
The park is directly above the east portal of Big Bend Tunnel on what used to be the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad (now part of CSX). This, Talcott locals argue, was the site of John Henry’s battle with the steam drill. However, there were several tunnels in the area that went by the name “Big Bend”, and it has been pointed out that there are no records of a steam drill ever being employed on the Big Bend tunnel near Talcott.
In Steel Drivin’ Man, Scott Reynolds Nelson argues that John William Henry, a prisoner in Virginia leased to work on the C&O in the 1870s, is the basis for the story. However, he suggests the contest actually took place at the Lewis Tunnel, between Talcott and Milboro, VA.
On the other hand, John Garst has suggested the contest took place at the Coosa Mountain Tunnel or the Oak Mountain Tunnel of the Columbus and Western Railway (now part of Norfolk Southern) near Leeds, AL, on 20th September 1887. He bases his claim on documentation and the account of one C. C. Spencer, who claimed in the 1920s to have witnessed the contest.
Related links:
www.npr.org/programs/morning/features/patc/johnhenry
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The most recent volume on John Henry is Scott Reynolds Nelson’s Steel Drivin' Man: John Henry, the Untold Story of an American Legend published by Oxford University Press in 2006 (click on the cover to search for this book on Bookfinder.com).
The statue of John Henry located in the park was commissioned by the Hilldale-
The park is little more than a turn out from the west bound lane of the winding, two lane highway.
Michigan sculptor Charles Cooper completed the eight-
The truth about John Henry will probably never be known. In the song of his story, he is born strong and grows to become the greatest steel driving man in the land. When the owner of the railroad on which he is working buys a steam powered hammer drill, to save his job and those of his crew, he challenges the owner to a contest: him against the steam drill. Although he beats the drill, John Henry collapses exhausted and dies, and he is replaced by the new steam drill in any case.
A coal train exits the east portal of Big Bend Tunnel, visible from the park.
The tunnel was completed in 1872. It took 1,000 men three years to finish and was worked from both west and east portals, as well as from two vertical shafts, down which men and mules were lowered in large buckets. The work crews would eventually meet, at which time, a celebration would be held with a barrel of bourbon, and a gold watch for the first man to have broken through.
Many of the workers were newly freed slaves, schooled only for heavy labour under the South’s system of slavery. Although comparatively well paid at $1.25 a day, the work was back breaking and dangerous. The air inside the tunnel was thick with noxious black smoke and dust, and hundreds of men lost their lives through rock falls, asphyxiation and silicosis, as well as the casual violence that went with construction settlements. Their bodies were dumped into makeshift, sandy graves just outside the tunnel portals.
In many ways, steel drivers were amongst the most skilled of 19th century manual labourers. They worked 12 hour shifts, wielding 14 lb hammers to drive drills into the rock to place powder charges. As many as fifty holes, sometimes 14’ deep, were required for each blast and, once the rock was blasted free, it had to be shovelled by hand to be hauled out of the tunnel by mule carts.
As a figure of American folklore, John Henry is, in many ways, an epitome of the
indomitability of the individual (a recurrent theme in American culture and life),
as well as signalling the increasing marginalisation of the skilled American working
class during the nation’s relentless industrialisation during the 19th century. The
fact that he is also African-
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