Cannonsville was the largest community in the valley and a center of commerce and civic life, where Presbyterian, Baptist, and Methodist churches served spiritual and temporal needs, the Cannonsville Community House hosted dances, lectures, and meetings and housed a library, and local musicians often played at house parties and barn dances. The hamlets of Granton, Rock Royal, Rock Rift, and Beerston also had schools, stores, post offices, and businesses. Beerston, settled by Connecticut emigrants, was first called "the Den." Rock Royal was a self-sufficient community and among the first in the area to supply homes and businesses with electricity. Rock Rift included an acid factory that used timber to make wood alcohol and other chemicals, and about 200 people lived there, many in company-supplied housing. Forests along the Delaware River provided timber much in demand by builders and boatyards downriver, and logs were lashed together and piloted by skilled raftsmen to Trenton and Philadelphia. The Ontario and Western Railroad served Rock Rift and operated through 1957. These communities and dozens of outlying farms were acquired by the City through eminent domain and removed to make way for the Cannonsville Reservoir, built between 1955 and 1967, displacing more than 900 people and relocating 2,000 graves.