Amarillo BBQ Staple Quietly Loses a Familiar Feature – What Happened?

When I am driving around Amarillo, I tend to look around a lot. This weekend, I noticed a lot of signage changing. I don't know why this weekend was huge for that. Maybe with spring about to change to summer, it is a good time to change things up.

One big change is one that I'm not even sure when it happened, but it couldn't have been too long ago. Back in March there was an accident involving two vehicles getting into an accident where, unfortunately, there was a death.

Have You Noticed This Missing From the Rudy's BBQ Parking Lot Recently?

The accident involved one of the vehicles crashing into the Rudy's BBQ sign on the frontage road of I-40 and Western. From our media partner,  KAMR News 4's story on the incident:

The Tundra, after hitting the BMW, crossed the I-40 median between the south frontage road and hit head on into the Rudy’s BBQ Sign.

That accident caused significant damage to the sign, as would be expected. They did try to repair it. It's a huge sign and took up a lot of area, and was there to point out exactly where Rudy's was off of I-40. It could be spotted from a distance, so it did its job.

When I stopped by Rudy's over the weekend to pick up some food on a delivery, I noticed something that I hadn't before. The sign was gone. That big Rudy's sign is no more. I am not sure when it happened, but it had to be sometime recently.

I guess there was no way to just repair it after the accident, and that is sad. It's sad that the accident happened at all. It's tragic that a life was lost during the accident. It is definitely something else to drive by this stretch of restaurants at I-40 near Western and not see the iconic Rudy's sign towering over us.

Have you noticed any other sign changes recently in Amarillo? Follow along as we will point out more in the weeks to come.