Family, friends mourn loss of prominent Aspen house lifter

From the entrance to Aspen to the exit as you head toward Independence Pass, you might not know that you’re passing dozens of buildings that have been moved, raised, or otherwise altered from their original location. 

For the most part, all of those moves have been done by the same guy and his house moving company. 

Bill Bailey started moving homes when he was 14 years old, helping out with his stepdad’s home moving business. Bill died in April after a long battle with Leukemia and more than 50 years of running his own home moving business, Bailey House Movers, often with his stepson, Cody Douglas.

“From the Hickory House all the way to Matchless Drive, you can walk any block and see at least one building we’ve done over the last 45 to 50 years, all the old historic buildings,” said Douglas.

Bill got his start in Grand Junction when he was teenager where he opened his own business in 1972 after serving in the National Guard. He has helped move buildings all across the western slope of Colorado, some as far as hundreds of miles and some as little as tens of feet. 

His impact on the town of Aspen is undeniable. 

In Aspen, he primarily helped lift and support historic houses and structures in town while construction crews excavated underneath the building to expand the foundation, add basements, or otherwise renovate the subfloor area of the buildings. He has helped lift or move the old Red Onion building and the Innsbruck Hotel, just to name a couple. 

According to Steve Walden, owner of local construction company Steeplechase Construction, Bill was the mastermind behind much of the engineering and planning for how to support the houses. Walden contracted him to help with many of his projects in the Aspen area.

“He was able to understand all the components of a building, how to support them, what the loads were,” said Walden. “He was a super smart guy, really intelligent. He understood how to do his craft better than anybody. He could look at a building and know exactly how he was going to set up a grid of steel, where to place the loads, and then how to manipulate it, how to move it.”

Bill and stepson Douglas would lift structures using hydraulic jacks before supporting the structure underneath. The structures were often supported with massive steel I-beams suspended on top of wooden “bridge supports.” 

When transporting structures large distances, Bill and his team would occasionally need to load the buildings onto the backs of trailers and transport them on the highway. Many of these structures exceed the maximum height that roadways can support, so they would work with local municipalities to find alternate routes or temporarily remove stop lights and signs when necessary.

According to Douglas, Bill continued to work on the houses he was under contract with until a couple of months before his passing. 

“He was either running equipment, helping us get steel under these buildings, or our building shoring and cribbing,” said Douglas. “Either that, or for the ones we actually got on the road, he would be driving the truck.”

Beyond his business, Bill was married to wife Donna for 39 years. Their large family included his four stepchildren and two children. He was known for his love of fly fishing and ATV-ing with his family.

Douglas and his own son now plan to carry Bill’s home moving business forward for another generation. They will be assisting the remodeling of the old Skier’s Chalet building by the Shadow Mountain.