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ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: SEPT. 5, 2000

This Goose not easy to move

By DAVID BATES
Of the News-Register

How many people would you expect to come watch Howard Hughes' HK-1 Flying Boat be moved a across Three Mile Lane?

Take a guess - a wild guess.

Evergreen Aviation officials figure between 10,000 to 15,000 people will pile onto Three Mile Lane on Sept. 16 to see a little bit of aviation history - the Spruce Goose's final journey, from a translucent shed on the south side of Highway 18 to a new glass and steel museum on the north side, just a few hundred yards away.

"It's anybody's guess, depending on the weather and everything else for an event like this," concedes museum fund-raiser Rick Smithrud.

The last time the famous airplane was moved was in 1993. The 218-foot-long aircraft was taken apart in Long Beach, Calif., and moved to Oregon in four main pieces - the fuselage, the tail and the two 158-foot-long wings.

As it moved along the final stretch into McMinnville, the 1,500-foot caravan was accompanied by thousands of onlookers, most of whom lined Three Mile Lane. Others watched from the air, from airplanes, helicopters and hot air balloons.

The journey from Long Beach to the Evergreen campus took 138 days and spanned 1,055 miles. This time, officials said, the trip will span a few hundred yards and take no more than an hour or two, with the assistance of about 300 Evergreen employees and museum volunteers.

"We're dealing with a different set of logistics this time," said Smithrud. "It's a more compressed period of time."

Evergreen isn't the only one dealing with Goose-moving logistics, though. On Tuesday, more than a dozen officials from local police and fire agencies met with museum officials on the Evergreen campus to coordinate efforts.

"One of the questions that kept coming up at the table was, 'What happens if?' said museum marketing and public relations director James Nelson. "It's a very effective team of people we have looking at the details."

Traffic management is a big issue, one that involves agencies from the Oregon Department of Transportation to the McMinnville Police Department.

And to make matters even trickier, Goose-moving day coincides with another local event that's sure to generate more than the usual amount of weekend traffic - a football game that has Linfield College hosting Southern Oregon University at 2:30 p.m. on Maxwell Field.

Fortunately, that starts later than the normal 1:30 p.m. kickoff. Linfield moved the start time back not to accommodate the move, which it knew nothing about at the time, but to accommodate Southern Oregon's travel needs, said Linfield Athletic Director Scott Carnahan.

"Obviously, when we set the time for the football game, we really didn't know anything about the move," he said. But he noted, "It works out good for us that we moved the game time."

Yamhill County Sheriff Norm Hand said he expects traffic to be completely stopped along the Highway 18 bypass for no more than an hour. Reader boards will be put up the Friday before to let people know what's coming, and the sheriff will be joined by state and city police in managing traffic.

"It's a good plan," Hand said. "If we have to close the highway, I don't know what more could be done to prepare for it."

Museum crews expect to be at work before dawn. Traffic will be stopped at mid-morning, with the final details to be worked out this week.

The Goose is expected to start rolling around 10 a.m. Its trip across the highway should last no more than an hour.

Onlookers will be kept back from the caravan during the short ride.

"It's going to be very efficient," Nelson said. "It's not going to be anywhere near like 1992, when some things took a lot longer than people thought."

Carnahan said the Southern Oregon team and its fans should avoid much of the jam because they're coming from the south, up Highway 99 through Amity. But Linfield and Southern Oregon fans coming from Portland will need to go through Lafayette, so can expect delays.

The highway should be reopened about an hour and a half before the 2:30 p.m. kickoff.

Before the airplane is moved, it will be displayed in a staging area. Museum officials expect that to be a big draw in itself.

The public will be allowed to get very close to the mammoth craft. "My guess," Smithrud said, "is that they would be close enough to be able to touch it."

Volunteers will be on hand to talk about the airplane and its history, and the museum plans to provide information kiosks, food booths, toilet facilities and public parking on the grounds. "We're intending to keep people very comfortable," Nelson said.

Getting up close and personal with the Goose, however, won't be free. Nelson said the museum will still charge its regular daily admission price of $5.

Nelson said he doesn't have a price tag yet for the moving project. Evergreen has had several bids from moving companies but, at press time, officials had not settled on a firm to do the job.

At any rate, Nelson said, the museum is trying to keep costs low.

"I've been calling and trying to drum up as many sponsors as I can," Nelson said. "We've just been trying to do this in such a way that there's very little expense to the museum, because we're a nonprofit organization."

- With reporting by Steve Fox of the News-Register.