In 1930 people around Leeds, AL, and employees of the C of G claimed that a drill that was then sticking up in a rock outside the east portal of Oak Mountain Tunnel, Shelby County, AL, was John Henry's drill, left in place after he collapsed during a contest there with a steam drill. That would probably have been in 1887 (perhaps 1888; possibly but not likely 1886). One person told Guy B. Johnson (a John Henry researcher) that it happened on September 20.

Do these rumors still persist?

Does anyone know anything else about this?

Does anyone have any tips on how to go about tracking this down and establishing its truth or lack thereof?

-- John Garst (garst@chem.uga.edu), September 24, 2001

Answers

Click here: http://www.jvoyles.com/page22.htm for some interesting stuff on this topic.

-- Dale E. Burns (burns186@bellsouth.net), August 21, 2002.

Bob Hanson wrote: "Most sources I've read state that the contest between John Henry and the steam drill took place at the Big Bend Tunnel on the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad. (Where that tunnel is, exactly, I do not know.)" That's in Summers County, West Virginia, between Talcott and Hinton. I think that I can 90% guarantee that the story about John Henry and Big Bend Tunnel is fiction.

"I've heard vague references that said that it might have taken place of the CofG (somewhere), but your reference is the most definite I've heard on this." See Central of Georgia Magazine, October, 1930. This article contains a photograph of the drill sticking up out of the rock outside the east portal of Oak Mountain Tunnel, now usually called Short Tunnel.

-- John Garst (garst@chem.uga.edu), September 25, 2001.

Most sources I've read state that the contest between John Henry and the steam drill took place at the Big Bend Tunnel on the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad. (Where that tunnel is, exactly, I do not know.) I've heard vague references that said that it might have taken place of the CofG (somewhere), but your reference is the most definite I've heard on this.

Bob Hanson

-- Robert H. Hanson (RHanson669@aol.com), September 24, 2001.