When the Navy announced its plans to further expand Naval Air Station Whidbey Island over six decades ago, some families packed their bags — and homes.
Avis Rector, an Oak Harbor resident, remembers standing on Deception Pass Bridge as a barge transporting her childhood home made its way through the strait’s strong currents. From a height of 180 feet, the two-story building looked like a little playhouse, she recalled thinking.
While the experience of moving the home was a bit nerve-wracking, the 91-year-old would do it all over again.
It was the 1950s, and amid the threat of a war with the Soviet Union, many farmers living on North Whidbey were given no choice but to sell their land to the U.S. government to make room for runways that could accommodate bigger planes.
Some, like Rector’s father Henry Weidenbach, took their livestock and moved to Skagit County. Others left farming behind, working on the base or finding another job on the island or the mainland.
She and her husband George Rector both worked as teachers and earned just enough to afford rent in a house in Sedro-Woolley that could fit the couple and their two infant daughters.
But in order to save the home she was born in from being razed to the ground, Rector was willing to go into debt to buy and move the building from its West Beach location to her father’s property on Monroe Landing Road.
She wasn’t the only one to entrust her house’s safety to Puget Sound. Her uncle Howard and her aunt Avis also had their log cabins plucked from their properties on the west side and barged all the way to Dugualla Bay.
Ron Van Dyk, a long-time islander, is only aware of a few similar instances, though in those cases the houses were barged either from or to the mainland and had nothing to do with the farmers’ diaspora. In the 1960s, about six houses that are still standing were barged from Seattle to Coupeville. Another approximately six homes were barged into the Fort Nugent area.
In 1978, half a dozen Quonset huts were barged from Cornet Bay to Alaska for the North Slope Pipeline Project, and one of the huts fell into the water just before reaching Deception Pass Bridge, according to Van Dyk.
Other moves occurred via land. Henry Weidenbach for example had a home sawed in half and moved on wheels to Monroe Landing, Rector said.
The year 1958 wasn’t the first time farmers had to leave. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, about 20 farms had to give up 4,325 acres of land to allow the government to build Ault Field, according to the Navy’s website.
Rector, who was about 8 at the time, recalled how farmers were sad to move but also understood it was for the best.
“All the people wanted to win the war too, and they knew what it would take,” she said.
The Navy completely transformed Oak Harbor, a town that counted less than 400 people. The project in fact brought economic vitality to an area that was significantly impacted by the Great Depression, attracting workers from the island and beyond.
While Rector misses the small community she once knew, the Navy also allowed her to make new friends that she keeps in touch with to this day.
At the family’s dairy farm on West Beach, which her grandfather Chris Weidenbach bought approximately in 1915, Rector had what she described as a beautiful childhood, marked by family picnics, horse rides on the beach and ice skating on the frozen lagoon.
Even in the seven years she spent attending college and sharing an apartment with her husband, Rector never stopped calling her parents’ house her home.
In 1958, a number of families including the Weidenbachs, the Hennis and the Grimms got news it was their turn to give their land to the government, and were only given less than a year to uproot their lives.
“We really did not want to move, because we were so happy,” Rector said. “We did not have a choice.”
The days that preceded the move were particularly busy. While the wives took care of the house and the family, they had to hurriedly decide what to take and what to discard. At the same time, family members who helped on the farms had to move livestock and supplies.
Rector’s father moved his animals and belongings to a farm in Skagit County, where he could no longer share supplies with his brother as they lived miles apart from each other, she said.
In addition to the house, Rector purchased a piece of her father’s property on Monroe Landing, which he bought a few years prior as he expected he would have to eventually move.
In September, the house was lifted from the ground with the help of large wheeled beams and was pulled by what Rector recalled as a very old truck.
The house was then loaded onto a barge with the help of ramps made with rocks and logs found on West Beach.
The barge left in the morning, traveling north and through Deception Pass before descending south to Penn Cove, where it arrived in the afternoon. The house was finally unloaded the following morning, after waiting for the high tide.
Because it was too large to pass under the power lines, the house was pulled through the fields with the help of a truck with a wheel so wobbly it came off, Rector said. Despite the inconvenience, the house made it safe and sound to its final destination.
During the move, the lath and plaster walls didn’t crumble or crack — durability that Rector attributed to Otto Van Dyk’s prowess. The Dutch builder, and Ron Van Dyk’s uncle, is still remembered for building the Roller Barn and the Maylor home, among other historic sites.
In the 66 years that followed the big move, the house continued to be a place where Rector created happy memories with her family, and she has no intention of selling it, much to her daughters’ relief.
While its white exterior has been painted green and yellow, the house hasn’t changed much, aside from a few renovations and the added furniture.
The organ, which belonged to Rector’s grandmother, still sits in the corner of the living room, a reminder of the days when she and her siblings would have fun messing with it. The fire poker, which was part of a gift her late mother Genevra never got to see, still remains by the fireplace.
Though a runway now completely covers the spot where the house stood, a piece of Weidenbach history still lives on, Rector found out.
On a slice of land, Genevra Weidenbach’s daffodils continue to bloom every spring.
(Photo by Roy Peterson) A barge transports Avis Rector’s two-story house and Ed Weidenbach’s one-story house through Deception Pass.
(Photo provided) Six-year-old Avis Weidenbach, the third girl from the right, poses for a photo with her family at the farm in 1939.
(Photo by Roy Peterson)
(Photo by Luisa Loi) The Weidenbach’s house, which was once green and stood in the West Beach area, has been repainted several times since it was moved to Monroe Landing. It was built in 1928 by Otto Van Dyk, a skilled Dutch builder known for building the Roller Barn and the Maylor home.
