The house my father grew up in was built a good distance above the Finlay River, but one year an exceptionally high flood threatened to lift wash it away. My grandfather managed to save it by holding it in place with cables strung over the roof and tied to the base of trees on each side. He decided to move it to even higher ground that summer. This was in 1931. Although this was many years after I would imagine that they used similar methods.

My dad said that the men dug two long parallel trenches under the house then drug two long logs under it. Cribbing was placed beneath these logs in the cellar to keep the house from falling in when it got moved. The logs were braced in the front and back with timbers crossing in an X pattern to keep the logs from pulling together or spreading when the house started moving.

There were no vehicles or heavy equipment in the area when they moved the house so a team of 10 horses were used. These horses were not able to move the house by themselves so they used the mechanical advantage of a snatch-block. The men buried a log (called a dead man) ten feet in the ground and sunk a deep post in front of it. Tie-back cables were run from the dead man to the post to support it and the whole works was buried.

A three sheave block-and-tackle was tied to the post and another one was tied to the logs under the house. The horses pulled on a cable that was strung through the block and tackle which drug the house to the post. When the house reached the post it was cut off level with the ground and a new post and deadman was dug. This process was repeated six times until the house reached its final destination.

My grandfather had already dug the new basement to a depth of five feet and used this dirt to Make a ramp to haul the house over the remaining three feet of cellar walls. Once again cribbing was placed in the basement to keep the house from dropping in - It was cut into firewood after the house was in place.

The river never flooded the old location again after the house was moved. It stood in place until BC Hydro burnt it to the ground in 1968. They had just finished building the WAC Bennet Dam and were beginning to flood the river valley. BC Hydro destroyed all of the old buildings that were to be flooded beneath the new reservoir.

Note: The cable was brought into the country some years before to be used at the Ingenika Mine. As there were no roads or river access it had to be brought in by horses. The cable was rolled into six coils spaced out so two coils could be placed on either side of a packhorse with a strand leading back to the next horse. Two more coils were placed on each side of the second horse with a the cable leading back to the third horse who carried the remaining two loops. All three horses were thus joined by one long continuous cable.

Newborn settlements of North America in the nineteenth century were frequently located in places that proved less desirable over time (ore became exhausted or for other reasons), so it was not uncommon to move buildings since building material could be precious, given the location, and it made little sense to abandon the value of a building just because a move was necessary. This was particularly true of the Intermountain Mining West, which often featured remote communities that depended on the transportation of supplies over long distances.

Moving buildings could be achieved in several ways. Virginia City's Chollar "Mansion" (it was actually a mine superintendent's house and office), built around 1862, had to be moved four blocks in 1871. This was a three-story brick structure of not inconsiderable weight, but the community was filled with mining engineers and an industry accustomed to moving forty tons of ore per wagon load. I'm not sure how much this structure weighs, but the engineers managed to slide the building four blocks downhill to its present location. I'm not sure how this was accomplished, but I suspect that they jacked it up and placed it on a makeshift sled and then used the mine hoist at the top of the hill to lower the building. That is the most remarkable nineteenth-century example that I know of.

What can be done for a three-story masonry structure is easily done for smaller wooden houses and other buildings. There are many examples of wooden houses "traveling" in the Intermountain West: it was typically a matter of jacking up a wooden building and placing it on a heavy-duty wagon and hauling it to the next location.

When Virginia City's International Hotel (built 1859) seemed no longer to serve a community that was apparently failing, the structure was cut into pieces and shipped to Austin in central Nevada, again by wagon. There is was reassembled. Virginia City surprised many by coming back to life, so an International was rebuilt there, burned in 1875, was rebuilt and then burned again in 1914. Today, the only International from Virginia City is the original one, which continues to serve drinks and meals in Austin - a testimony to the ability to move even large structures over long distances.

I can think of other examples - the Belmont Mill is no longer in Belmont, Nevada, but rather in a remote part of the Great Basin. This, again, was a matter of dismantling, moving, and rebuilding.

Wherever and whenever it made economic sense to move a building, people found a way to accomplish it.