The Day Texas Chili Took On the World
Near Terlingua, Texas
The modern legend of Terlingua began in October of nineteen sixty-seven. Two men showed up to cook chili in the ruins of the ghost town, three judges sat down to taste, and the world's first official chili cookoff was born from an argument between a Texas newspaper columnist and a New York writer. The argument had started in August of nineteen sixty-seven, when a writer named H.
Allen Smith published a piece in Holiday magazine that dismissed Texas chili. Smith was not a Texan, and the Texans who read it were furious. Frank X.
Tolbert, who wrote for the Dallas Morning News and had deep personal convictions about chili, organized a response. He and Carroll Shelby, the auto racing legend, arranged a formal cookoff in the ruins of Terlingua. Wick Fowler, a veteran Texas journalist and skilled cook, would represent the home state.
The story goes that the judges could not agree and the contest ended in a draw. The cookoff became an annual event. It drew thousands of visitors to a ghost town that had no running water or paved roads.
It eventually split into two competing events that have both been held every November since. Terlingua, a place that most Americans had never heard of, became the capital of an American food tradition.
