Reviewed by: Pat Byington
Farewell tour: the abandoned boat on Highway 280 has been towed
Reading time: 2 minutes
We’re finally saying farewell to a short-lived Birmingham landmark: the abandoned MasterCraft boat that crashed into a tree on Highway 280 near Mountain Brook last month.
Read on for more.
A harmless incident turned local icon
On social media, plenty of locals theorized about how exactly the boat crashed into the tree right off of the Red Mountain Expressway. However, according to the Mountain Brook Police Department, nobody really knows how it got there. They’re just glad it didn’t create any hazard for drivers.
We spoke to MBPD Community Relations Officer Megan Thomas, who equated the situation to another funny local mishap—“Billy” the goat.
To jog your memory, in July 2023, a goat nicknamed “Billy” ran loose in Mountain Brook. Over the course of six days, he was spotted at the Levite Jewish Community Center, the grounds of the former Montclair Hospital, Montclair Animal Hospital and around the Mountain Brook, Birmingham and Irondale neighborhoods.
“I would equate this similarly to the goat, in that it created quite the buzz on social media, and in the different Facebook groups where they just take it and run with it and have fun. It’s pretty funny, because I actually have a picture that somebody did of the goat in my office here to remember and memorialize that incident.
It’s not every day that a goat is on the loose in Mountain Brook, and it’s not every day you’re driving down the highway and there’s a boat that center-punched a tree. It could have been a lot worse, so I’m very thankful that it wasn’t and that everybody could get a nice little laugh from it.”
Megan Thomas, Community Relations Officer, MBPD
Farewell to this quirky landmark
Some users on Facebook have already started to have fun memorializing the boat-turned-social-media-star. One user, Tripp Watson, posted the above photo with the caption “It’s a sad day for Birmingham and for Alabama, as one of our monuments is cruelly removed from our public spaces!”
If Birmingham has nothing else, we always have a sense of humor.
Have any photos or comments on the famous abandoned MasterCraft? Tag us at @bhamnow + share your thoughts!
