Coffeyville became a division headquarters for a major railroad company. Caney got only a water tank. Towns that did not get a railroad cutting through its Main Street either folded or withered away quickly. Caney stuck out its non-train-ness for 15 dusty years. Coffeyville, Independence, Cherryvale, Nowata and Parsons all had interurban trolley tracks. Caney never had such short-line luxury.

While the Santa Fe, Katy and Frisco were frequent symbols of railroading in other towns, Caney lived on the hopes of such non-existent companies like the Kansas, Oklahoma Central and Southwestern Railway. This was Caney, which, by its location in the southwest part of Montgomery County, was unable to clamor for that railroad notoriety that made or broke towns in the 1870s. Instead, the town patiently waited for railroads to come through community - 110 years ago. The first railroad to reach Caney was in 1886, and it was a subsidiary of the Missouri Pacific called the Denver, Memphis and Atlantic Railroad. It was one of train magnate Jay Gould's vast railroad enterprise. The DMA only connected Chetopa to the Arkansas City-Wellington area, but the terminal points had connections to other points across the nation.

It was Caney's first glimpse of the railroad, and the tiny community was on its way to early-day boom while other cities in Montgomery County already were veterans at the railroad industry. "By the time Caney got its railroads, the community was a late comer," said John Chambers, a Parsons man who has extensively researched the histories of southeast Kansas railroads. Chamber said that one year after construction of the railroad through Caney, the DMA was taken over by the Missouri Pacific, and the company would have east-west rail traffic in Caney until the mid-1970s.

Caney didn't have an industrious need for that railroad, even though promoters and town boosters claimed in the early days that without a railroad, Caney would become a ghost town. Zinc smelters, gas wells, oil derricks, brick plants and glass manufacturers wouldn't make their presence known until the early 1900s. Once the railroad was established in Caney, the Missouri Pacific even had a tough time trying to convince downtown businessmen to use its tracks.

According to the "Unfolding of the Scroll," written for Caney's Centennial in 1971, the Missouri Pacific was building a spur line to go from the railroad's depot near on North Wood Street to Fourth Avenue. But for whatever reason, downtown business leaders protested it, even going to the construction site during the middle of a night and destroying much of the ties and rails. So how did Caney profit from the Missouri Pacific's early presence in the community? Cattle, and lots of them. Because of Caney's proximity to the lush Osage Hills, where bluestem grasses clashed with scrubby oaks, cattle herds were heading from the Oklahoma prairies to the nearest rail centers. Towns like Caldwell, Elgin, Coffeyville, Chetopa and Baxter Springs already were known in cattle trail circles because of the railroad establishment in those communities, but tiny Caney was a secondary cowtown from the mid-1880s until the late 1890s.

Ivan Pfalser, a Caney historian, wrote in a Chronicle article in 1993 that Caney's closer proximity to larger markets made the community a prime location for cattle shipments. Pfalser said Elgin was a prime location for the Osage-grass fed cattle, however Caney was closer to Kansas City, the big cattle market, and thereby provided lesser shipment costs to the cattle owners. On the south edge of Caney, cattle dipping vats were erected whereby cattle would be brought to the community, dipped in chemicals to kill disease-carrying tick and lice, and placed on cattle cars bound for feed lots in the north. The Missouri Pacific even built a spur track that went to the dipping vats south of Caney. That spur line would later be shared with the Santa Fe in later years.

Col. S.M. Porter, a Caney lawyer, had extensive cattle properties in the Caney area at that time. Seeing the potential to gain wealth in the train and cattle industry and to boost Caney's economic power, Porter began efforts in the mid-1890s to secure railroad right of way from Caney to the big Texas ranches. His endeavor would be called the Kansas, Oklahoma Central and Southwestern Railway, and Caney would be the headquarters. The railway would stretch from Cherryvale to Vernon, Texas and go through the community of Guthrie, O.T., which was the center of growth in the territory. Porter even made trips to Europe and the East Coast to secure financing for the highly capitalized railway, and by 1903, the Knickerbocker Trust Company in New York had signed its name to finance the railway. However, plans fell flat as the cattle ranches in Texas built railroads to the Gulf Coast. And, more importantly, Porter's "paper railroad," so named because it existed solely on legal forms and bank documents, would be over shadowed by the grand daddy of all railroads - the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe.

By 1903, it was obvious that Santa Fe would extend its long arms from Kansas and into Oklahoma. The railroad already had a line from the Kansas City area to Cedar Vale, via Sedan, Havana, Independence, Cherryvale, Chanute and points north. Why didn't the Santa Fe build a line to the Indian Territory border in the 1880s and '90s. Chambers said there wasn't anything in Indian Territory except for cattle worth pursuing. The great oil boom that made Oklahoma into a petroleum center didn't begin flourishing until the late 1900s and early '10s. However, that cattle industry in the territory was needing railroads, and Caney seemed to be a good place to put an extension into the lush tallgrass prairies of what would become Oklahoma.

In 1905, the Santa Fe extended its line from Caney to Owen Switch, just south of the state line, to Bartlesville. From Owen Switch, Santa Fe would build a line to Fairfax, Okla., strictly for cattle shipments. That line would remain in use until 1964. Porter even helped with getting the Santa Fe through Caney, but even with his entrepreneurial tact and monetary influence, the most the Santa Fe would do for Caney's railroad status was build a depot and water columns for the big steam engines. "Caney was too close to other towns to deserve a through-route destination," Chambers said. "Many other towns were division points for a railroad, but that's because they had exclusive locations. Caney was too close to Coffeyville, Cedar Vale, Independence to get a division headquarters. "Plus, Caney was too late to get maintenance buildings, a major rail yard, a signal tower, or whatever else." So, had Caney tried to get those railroads in the 1870s much like it did in the 1900s, Caney very well may had more for its railroad companies, Chambers said.

The Santa Fe would maintain a presence in Caney until 1990s, and the Missouri Pacific would abandon its rails in 1977. Both railroads had depots. The Santa Fe depot near Fifth and Foreman streets was dismantled in the late 1970s without much notice; the Missouri Pacific depot on North Wood Street would be moved to an area farm for use as a barn in 1982. Today, the South, Kansas and Oklahoma Railroad uses the old Santa Fe lines to move its cargo and freight from Tulsa to the Chanute-Humboldt area - more than 110 years after the town saw its first Iron Horse ride into the community.

Paper railroads failed to deliver their high hopes

The early-days of railroads in the region often were filled with gutsy businessmen ready to sink their fortunes into rail transportation. However, those efforts often were futile as local businessmen were unable to accumulate the financial drive and prestige of many of the "robber barrons" of the region's earliest days.

In Caney, the hopes of connecting the community with growing cattle markets in Oklahoma kept optimism alive in the 1890s. The railroad that would put Caney on the locomotive map was called the Kansas, Oklahoma Central and Southwestern Railway. Caney, which was planned to be home of the railway's headquarters, even contributed $10,000 to the endeavor to link Cherryvale with Vernon, Texas. One of the main towns the railway would be pass through was Guthrie, Oklahoma, which, in 1899, was the center of attention in Indian Territory.

A quartet of regional entrepreneurs poured money into the planned railways, spending much of their time developing the enterprise. Those four people and the offices in the railway company were Jacob Bartles of Bartlesville (and Bartlesville's namesake), president; Samuel Porter of Caney, general attorney; P.S. Hollingsworth of Independence, cashier; and Dr. Frozier of Coffeyville, secretary. Porter and Bartles maintained healthy interests in industries between Bartlesville and Caney, and Porter made a trip to Europe to secure financing for the railway venture. The entire operation was capitalized for $7 million, a hefty sum for 1898 in dusty southeast Kansas. Even the local press hyped up the railway venture, boasting that Caney would be linked to the east coast via the Kansas, Oklahoma Central and Southern Railway. The Cherryvale Evening Clarion in 1899 said, "It will open up virgin territory, leaving the Kansas state line at Caney, passing through Bartlesville, I.T., to Guthrie, O.T. In Texas, a rich section not as yet well settled will be opened up to enterprise. There are but few large towns along the route, but in he western country, the railroad precedes the town... "In all probability much California through passenger traffic will be diverted to this road, as connections with the Southern Pacific will undoubtedly be made."