Question: What West Texas ghost town is the site of an annual chili cookoff that started in 1967?
Answer: Terlingua. Located in Brewster County west of Big Bend National Park, Terlingua was home to four mining companies and 3,000 residents in the years following the discovery of mercury in the 1880s. By the end of World War II, mercury production had stopped, and Terlingua became a ghost town.
In 1967, New York journalist H. Allen Smith and Texas reporter Wick Fowler met in Terlingua to compete in a chili cookoff. Judges couldn’t determine a winner, so a rematch was scheduled for the following year, and it became an annual event attended by thousands of people.
