John Henry



John Henry was a steel driver who worked on and died at the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway's Big Bend Tunnel during the 1870s. His story has slipped into American folklore similar to the likes of Johnny Appleseed and Calamity Jane.

The legend of the man has been immortalized by Danny Glover in a 1986 episode of Shelley Duvall's Tall Tales & Legends, the 1995 Disney film Tall Tale (opposite Oliver Platt as Paul Bunyan), and animated shorts from Paramount Pictures in 1973 and Disney in 1999 (featuring Alfre Woodard as the narrator).