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House makes trip on Idaho 55 without a hitch

As reported in last week's Transporter, a red log cabin was moved from its home in Horseshoe Bend to Smiths Ferry Tuesday afternoon and into the wee hours Wednesday morning. The cabin was donated to Chapel of the Pines church to serve in their ministry.

The entire 33-mile operation was slated to run until 6 a.m. Wednesday, but was actually completed four hours earlier because of ideal travel and traffic conditions.

The move was accomplished in two steps - first crews loaded the cabin onto a flatbed (the house was loaded in two pieces; the roof was detachable) and traveled a few miles to the port of entry site on the edge of town. Then, at midnight another ITD crew accompanied it from there north up to Smiths Ferry.

"We encountered some traffic between Horseshoe Bend and Banks, but once we got past Banks, it was smooth sailing. That flatbed took some of those tight corners just fine," said Dan Davis, the ITD maintenance foreman who oversaw the second stage of the move.

It nearly took as long to load the house - about an hour and a half - as to transport it.

Besides the lack of traffic to contend with, the move went as quickly as it did in large part because the flatbed was able to travel at 20-25 mph, about twice the speed originally expected.