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Nearly 47 years after opening Dallas’s beloved Celebration Restaurant, owner Ed Lowe died this week while on a canoeing trip in West Texas. He was 69 years old.
Lowe was visiting Big Bend National Park when he began looking for a place to camp near the Boquillas Canyon and fell off an embankment into rough waters below, according to a press release from the National Park Service. His fellow travelers alerted authorities and attempted to perform CPR on Lowe, but were unsuccessful. Park rangers recovered Lowe’s body from the swift-flowing Rio Grande River later that day.
Since opening in 1971, Lowe’s restaurant earned a dedicated crowd of multi-generational regulars, thanks to its simple, home-cooking-style fare. It was a stalwart of Eater’s iconic Dallas restaurants map, and a solid destination for pecan-crusted chicken and pot roast. The restaurant has not yet issued a statement on the loss of its proprietor, and it’s unclear what its future will look like in Lowe’s absence.
