Disappearing Landmarks: Starship Pegasus – Italy, Tx
While driving to Scarborough Renaissance Festival this year, I noticed that one of my roadside landmarks was missing. I was accustomed to seeing a cool, funky building – the Starship Pegasus – off the starboard bow while traveling northbound on IH-35 East passing by Italy (Texas that is) exit 386.
The starship, errr… building had been abandoned for quite a number of years. It looked quite a bit different than this Starship Pegasus in Season 7 Episode 12 which materialized into a chunk of asteroid during an illegal test for a prototype Federation cloaking device. This one appeared to have been a bit low and materialized in the ground. Oops! Aaarrgggghh prototypes!
The last time that I photographed it in 2016 there was a For Sale sign on it and a new truck/travel stop across the street and a new business next to it. Also the state was doing highway construction in the area expanding IH-35. So apparently that exit was getting to be a more popular place to make a pit stop. I decided to take a few minutes to stop and snap a few photos of the current state of the structure. Now I’m glad I did! Gallery with larger images here.
Just a bit farther up the way is the company that probably built the structure — just look for the giant centipede. That structure is still there!
This year (2018) I decided to check on the Starship as I couldn’t see it from the completed highway renovation and found out it had been replace by a MacDonald’s.
Moral of the story: Take those opportunities to photograph interesting/funky/cool buildings and landmarks, even if they’re just snapshots, because they won’t be there forever.
