Through out the world, humans have impacted history. Books have been written, stories retold, and events re-lived. Through these written, or told, stories and books and eyewitness accounts, people are better able to understand history. Many people have inspired the rich history that the United States enjoys.The most prominent people include George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Junior. Alaska, also known as The Last Frontier, has an especially rich history that has been impacted by many people, which has both helped and harmed the people many generations after. This paper will focus on Michael James Heney, or Big Mike as his friends called him, part of his early life, and his greatest achievements. Big Mike was born on 24 Oct. 1864 near what is now Stonecliffe, Ont., son of Thomas Heney and Mary Ann McCourt, Irish immigrants who made a living by farming. At 14, Michael ran away from home to work construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway,(CPR), until one of his elder brothers found him and brought him him. He stayed on his family farm until he reached seventeen, and headed to work the CPR’s construction front at Elkhorn, Man. When he got…show more content… He worked on the project for a year, during which he learned all phases of railway construction. After the last spike was driven into the ground, he felt competent enough to become an independent contractor. As his father wanted, he went back to Canada to earn a degree in engineering, but he soon returned to British Columbia where he earned a number of construction contracts from CPR.In 1887, he moved to Seattle and earned the title of “ the boy contractor” after he completed the Seattle Lake Shore and Eastern Railroad. Many construction projects in Washington, British Columbia and Alaska followed.In 1896, Heney’s interest in the north rose after he built a mine hydraulic plant at Anchor Point,
