By Jessica Keller

The Courier-Herald

Enumclaw resident Karen Staley remembers looking up at the old house at 2034 Jensen St. for the past 27 years and wishing it was hers.

When she first started out in Enumclaw and delivered flowers to the hospital, she would stand in front of the nearby house and admire its architecture.

"I've loved it before I ever got to go inside the house," Staley said.

That's why Staley, owner of Enumclaw's Maple Thicket Florist and Gifts, was so thrilled when she heard Nancy Johnson-Becker, a doctor in Enumclaw, was selling the house. Johnson-Becker has bought a number of properties in the area of the hospital and her clinic in order to expand her clinic, and allow for other medical buildings to be built.

Staley said she and her husband Darrel have always wanted to own an older house, but most take so much work. The house on Jensen Street, however, is very well kept up, but it was the character, Staley said, and the architecture, that attracted her to the home.

"We felt we couldn't buy that same character again," she said.

Since agreeing to purchase the house, the Staleys have been working hard to fulfill their dreams, including moving the house to a piece of property on Mud Mountain Dam Road. Their dreams came to fruition when the house was moved to its new location Saturday night.

"It's been such a blessing," Staley said. "It's one of those dreams that can come true."

The Staleys began the project of moving in September of last year. They bought the house from Johnson-Becker for $1, just to make the sale legal. Moving the house, however, has been expensive and has not been simple.

"We've learned what it takes to make a project of this size come together," Staley said.

The Staleys have had to work with many government agencies, and a lot of extra work was needed just in the preparation. It was the permit process, planning the route to travel, arranging for light and power lines to be taken down and put back up as soon as possible during the moving, as the house is too tall for them to remain in place, and working very hard to not inconvenience anybody in the process, Staley said, that has been very challenging.

"We just didn't realize how involved the project was going to be until we got into it," she said.

But the end result is worth it, Staley said.

"It's fun thinking about us living in an antique," she said. "We'd like to leave everything as original as we can.

"And we feel blessed to save that house by moving it," Staley added.

It's not the first time the house has been moved.

The house was built in 1901 by Charles Reber and first sold to Frank Hanson.

When Hanson sold the house in 1926 to Ole Johnson, one of the stipulations was the house had to be moved from its location a couple blocks up the street to its current location.

Dora Coolidge, one of Johnson's daughters, remembers her father hired somebody to do the moving. And with a mule hitched to a drum, the mover slid the house over to the lot on Jensen Street.

"Now this is a new way of doing business, from moving a house using a mule and a drum to a truck," Coolidge said.

Coolidge remembers the family went to California when the house was moved to Jensen Street, and she said her mother envisioned every picture on the floor and every dish broken when they got back. When the Johnsons returned, Coolidge said, her mother was pleasantly surprised to find everything intact.

"He had moved that house all by himself and a mule, and nothing got broken," Coolidge said with a laugh.

Coolidge, who lived in the house from the time she was in fifth grade to when she left to go to college, has fond memories of the house.

"It was a wonderful house for a family of eight," she said. "There was room for all of us."

When it was discovered her mother had a heart problem, Coolidge said her father had a neighbor build a bedroom where the side porch was, so the house only had a front porch and a back porch, instead of three porches.

Coolidge's nephew Gregg Herrington, whose mother was Coolidge's sister and one of the six Johnson siblings - four girls and two boys - to live there, also has fond memories.

Herrington said he spent many a happy summer day and holiday visiting his grandparents and relatives.

One of the things he remembers best about the house was it had only one bathroom, and it was not downstairs.

"That huge house and there was only one bathroom," he said.

That huge house came in handy when Herrington was growing up, however. He said every Christmas in the early to mid 1950s, all of the Johnson siblings, with their spouses and children, would congregate back at the house to celebrate.

"That was the heyday," he said.

Herrington remembers all the kids - 15 or 20 cousins in all - would pile up Christmas Eve in sleeping bags, staying up all night and talking.

"There were just great memories there," he said.

The staircase was the best part of the entire house, Herrington said - it was great for wrestling and playing on, and rolling down.

Herrington remembers the family had a chicken coop out back, and he also remembers the house's old phone and the phone number - 780J.

Herrington is sorry to say he's never gone back to visit his old childhood stomping grounds, but is glad the house is going to be saved.

The last of the Johnsons left in the early 1960s, and since then the house has seen a couple more owners, and Staley is glad to be one of them. She is also happy, by buying and moving the house, she and her husband are preserving a part of history.

"We're so happy that it could be saved and not destroyed," Staley said. "Otherwise, the house would have to be hauled away in pieces."

Jessica Keller can be reached at jkeller@courierherald.com