It's not every night you get to watch a schoolhouse slide by.

But Friday night on the Mountain was just such a night as the Mohawk Trail one-room schoolhouse was pulled off its lot at Mohawk Road West and West 15th Street and out onto the street for a slow, painstaking eight-kilometre journey to its new home behind the new Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board's offices just off Upper Wentworth.

"We've lived here a long time and I think it's something special to have this piece of history still with us," said Loretta Ward, who moved into the neighbourhood 45 years ago.

"My biggest regret is that I never got inside it, but my husband says I can see it at its new home."

Mohawk Road was lined with rubberneckers; they'd brought their cameras and their cellphones and their tablets to record the moment. Some brought chairs, but most were too excited to sit.

The historic schoolhouse was built in 1882 and used as a school continuously until the mid-'60s when it was transformed into a museum. It was actually moved off its foundation about five weeks ago by the crews from McCulloch Movers, who'd spent weeks hand-digging tunnels under the old structure and threading steel beams through those warrens before finally throwing the switch on the hydraulics and liberating the school from the earth's cold embrace.

McCulloch has done this often — its website lists more than 80 massive historical objects they've successfully moved. They have moved a lot of very big things: Locomotive and train stations, 1812 gun boats and 1932 tug boats, churches and post offices, cottages and homes.

And now a 132-year-old one-room schoolhouse turned museum.

The move does necessitate moving — and replacing — utility lines, including telephone and cable. But while there will be a rolling series of electrical blackouts along the move route, Horizon Utilities say it's not actually moving lines, merely cutting power as a precautionary move while the school rolls through each of seven different stretches of the 8-km route.

"We want to make sure this bit of history gets to its new home safely," said Horizon's director of corporate communications, Sharon Nease.

Nease said the schoolhouse is taking a roundabout route to its new home, to minimize the impact the move will have on neighbours. The most direct route was rejected in favour of heading west to Garth, south to Stone Church and back east to Upper Wentworth — a total of more than 8 km, instead of just more than 3 km.

- Mahoney: New life for Mohawk Trail School