One building moved from Bayocean is referred to as "the Hicks house" because it was last owned by C.G. Hicks. Located on the highest point of the town, at the apex of High Street, Bay Terrace, and 14th Avenue, it sat catty-corner to the Bayocean Hotel Annex. It's the one on the right (south of the other two) in this photo.
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This photo, from Tillamook County Pioneer Museum, must have been taken from a hotel room on the northeast corner, looking northeast. |
Barbara Bennett said that it was known as the "House of Hicks" because they operated a catering service there. Joann Steffey, daugher of A.T. Dolan, said the Hicks also owned a restaurant by that name in Portland. This is confirmed by the January 1947 newsletter of Geological Society of the Oregon Country, which held a meeting there.
Early in 1952, Hicks accepted the inevitable and sold both houses for next to nothing to Mr. and Mrs. Charles Ross, according to Barbara Bennett and Dr. Rex Parsons, who lived in the house on the Netarts Highway from 1983 to 2002 . The Rosses paid LeBeck and Sons, a Portland contractor, $7000 to move both houses (February 7, and March 27, 1952 articles int the Tillamook Headlight Herald ). They must have subcontracted Leonard Bales Construction and Morgan Burckard Plumbing to get the house ready to move, because Leslie Vaughn Burckard was with her father the entire time, and later married Morgan's son Gus. She was only nine years old, but remembers being frightened by the cliff moving closer to the house each day. One of the photos depicts this clearly, in that the Bayocean Hotel Annex, which was to the right of the Hicks house, had already fallen 100' to the beach below.
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Looking north, from the south down route taken. Dorian Studio photo provided by John Chaix |
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Photo taken from the north, looking south, ocean to the right, hotel ruins gone. The Dolan house is not obstructing the view because it had burned down. Dorian Studio photo provided by John Chaix |
In order to get it onto a barge and ship it across the bay, the house had to be cut in half. Parsons was told that Mrs. Ross (just 5' tall) ignored state policemen's orders to stop because of concerns that the house was too close to the power lines, and just "kept on truckin". He added a two-story addition that's not shown in the photo below, but he preserved the original walls and ceilings of two bedrooms, the bath between them and the hallway leading to them because they were old growth, tongue-and-groove, clear fir.
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This is a photo of the Hicks House taken in 2016. |