Home at Last : The plan was simple. So was carrying it out. The problem was getting started.

Michael Schuman wasn’t trying to move a mountain. He just wanted to move a simple wooden bungalow to a park in Newhall that housed other historical buildings preserved by the Santa Clarita Valley Historical Society.

As it turned out, “it might have been easier to move a mountain,” said Schuman, a society member who was project co-director. “What was working was Murphy’s Law, with a vengeance.”

It took several tries in recent weeks to successfully move the 64-year-old house from its original location in Valencia to the William S. Hart Park.

Thursday’s move went off without a hitch. Getting started had been the problem.

Schuman, who watched as the bungalow was finally moved before dawn Thursday, said the historical society had originally planned to move the house in December.

On Dec. 12, society members had gathered to bid the house farewell and wait for movers to whisk it off on its five-mile trip down Magic Mountain Parkway and San Fernando Road to the park. They waited and waited. Then they waited some more.

“When the mover didn’t show up, we got suspicious,” said society member Carol Rock.

A telephone call revealed that San Joaquin Movers, a Bakersfield company, also had been contracted to relocate a historical house in the Antelope Valley. “When he should have come here, he went to Palmdale,” Schuman said.

The next time, the move was canceled by rain. Then there was the time the mover couldn’t get over the Grapevine because of snow.

“I thought that as a junior high principal I had experienced every frustration known to man,” said Schuman, a retired educator. “I thoroughly believed that until I came up with this house.”

The bungalow, which was built in 1925 by Southern California Edison Co., was one of the few houses of the era not destroyed when the St. Francis Dam collapsed and flooded the valley in 1928, Schuman said. The historical society plans to restore the house and turn it into a museum about the disaster.

On Thursday, the house was finally in place. Schuman was relieved. “I knew one day we would move it.”