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At one time Cannel City had a population of from 1.000 to 1,500 people, hundreds of houses, a high school, bank, commissary, roller rink, hotel, movie house, church, private grocery stores (Caudill Brothers. George Neal and Taylor Day had stores), Cannel City Gas Company, Cannel City Telephone Company, Cannel City Recreation Club, oil wells, the Kentucky Block Cannel Coal Company, and the O&K Railway.
Cannel City became known as the largest cannel coal field in the world and its cannel left Caney Valley on the O&K Railway to be shipped to the Great Lakes region, Europe, and South America. Coal buyers came from Paris and London to stay at the Hotel DeLancey and enjoy the hospitality of East Kentuckians while buying coal.
People who came to Cannel City to work in the mines and on the railroad were mostly from Eastern Kentucky, although some of the supervisors came from cities like Lexington, Ky., Chicago, Ill., and New York City, N.Y. The work was hard for the common laborer, hours were long, and the pay was little; still they came to work to support their families. It would be hard to find people today who would do such hard, dirty work under the worst of conditions at 100 times the pay they received!
During a span of twenty years, Cannel City arose from Caney Valley to be the largest town in Morgan County, Ky., and one of the largest company operations in the state of Kentucky.
Cannel City was an oil town as well as a coal town. The first oil well was drilled in 1912 and proved to be a gusher, producing five hundred barrels a day, one of the largest in the state. This well was located close to the air compressor and a group of company houses. There was so much oil running on the ground that there was danger of fire, so word was sent to all the residents of the company houses in the area to put out all fires! Around fifty wells were drilled on land leased by the companies, each producing about fifty barrels a day. There was also natural gas in the area and some of the buildings such as the depot, commissary, and the Hotel DeLancey had gas lights, along with a few houses.
On November I, 1933, when the railroad closed its operation, the mines shut down. as there was no way to ship coal. Families began to move away as the mines closed, and stores and businesses closed their doors. The property of the Kentucky Block Cannel Coal Company was sold to Custer Jones and Walter Gardner in 1942.
The railroad was going to discontinue operation on November 1, 1933, and on October 31, 1933, the company gave the employees and their families one last ride to Jackson on the little tram. Earnest Allen of West Liberty (a young boy at the time) was one of those to take the last train to Jackson. When train engine No. 15 returned from the last trip and pulled into the depot at Cannel City, Earnest's father, Elizah, backed the old engine onto the siding and it never ran again. The O&K engine and rails were scrapped and the holdings were sold.
A lot of workers had left Cannel City before the companies closed, because they felt the companies were in financial trouble; others stayed because Cannel City was home to them, with some living there for over thirty years. The ones that stayed had no jobs, poor land to farm, and no way to make a living. Some way, some how, they have survived, just as their forefathers did before the coal boom.
There is little evidence today of "what once was, "As you drive through Cannel City there is a W.P.A. school building with grades one through five, a post office, Mr. and Mrs. Wheeler Benton's grocery store and gas station, and a couple of churches (one built by the company). Cannel City has a population now of about 150.
Today, Cannel City is a pleasant residential community made up of people that should have a lot of pride for "what once was."
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