By William “Skip” Deegans
Fayette County coal operator Thomas McKell built the 100-room Dunglen Hotel across the New River from Thurmond in 1901. The hotel was the site of a 24-hour bar, all-night dancing with orchestras from Cincinnati, and a gambling casino. It was the home of the legendary 14-year-old poker game. In one card game, a coal operator wagered his mine and lost it. Little known is a scam that occurred around the pool tables.
It seems a Cincinnati man and a railroad man were in cohorts. As the railroad man was beating the city man, $100 bets were made. The Cincinnati man, it turned out, was a hustler. Once the bets were increased, the hustler began betting the railroader and made off with $3,600 (over $100,000 in today’s dollars). Unknown is whether the Cincinnati fellow was intact when he caught the next departing train.
McKell’s son, William, was sent to The Lawrenceville Academy (now The Lawrenceville School), a private boarding school in New Jersey. After graduating from Yale University, he returned to Fayette County to run the McKell businesses, including the Dunglen Hotel. Business at the hotel declined during World War I and never fully recovered. In an alleged plot to increase business at the competing Lafayette Hotel in Thurmond, arsonists burned the wooden Dunglen in 1930. It was never rebuilt.
Sources: Independent Herald, West Virginia Archives & History, PBS.
