NEW RICHMOND - The Ohio River won't so easily sweep anymore into the century-old white house at the corner of George and Washington streets.
Linda and Michael Craig's house is leaving, moving 2 miles uphill - away from floods and muddy floors and mildewed rugs and soggy plaster. After rain delayed departure Wednesday - leaving the house jacked up 10 feet atop a flatbed and blocking George Street all day - the first leg of the move went smoothly Thursday.
The two-story, 1810-era house left George Street about 11 a.m. via a shortcut through a hole made in the trees bordering U.S. 52. It turned left and trundled north, arriving about 2 p.m. at the play fields near the Rivertown IGA.
There, the green-trimmed house will wait for the most perilous part of its journey - up a steep hill to its destination, a 1-acre lot with a river view on Rachel's Ridge. Workers with Joe Asher's house-moving company are building a temporary dirt ramp to help level the road.
It was rain - and the swollen Ohio River that flowed through New Richmond in March - that was behind the Craigs' decision to move their home out of the flood plain.
"My main concern has always been preservation. Moving the house is the only way to do that," Mrs. Craig said. "I'd rather have it be where it was born, but that wouldn't work."
The moving cost: $27,000, paid for by the Craigs.
The new site sits north of U.S. 52, in the hills that rise from the flat land where the core of the village of New Richmond sits. In March, floodwaters crossed U.S. 52 to the base of the hills, about seven blocks from the river's banks.
The house - with its curving cherry banister, five fireplaces and hand-hewn timbers - soaked in a foot of river water in March. In the 1937 flood - the Ohio's greatest flood recorded here - the river covered the house.
The Craigs - she's an art restorer; he's a retired carpenter with the Cincinnati Art Museum - bought the Federal-style house in 1985 and have lovingly fixed it up. Since late July - when the steel beams were first slid underneath and the house separated from its stone foundation - the couple have lived in a travel trailer.
Once the house arrives on Rachel's Ridge, it still won't be home. It will sit to the side of the lot while a basement is dug, then will be moved atop its new foundation.
Come Halloween, Linda Craig hopes to be living again in her home. "It was a funny sight today to see my lot - there's no house there anymore."
