TERLINGUA, Texas — If you want to know just how seriously Texans take their chili, take a step into the wild, wild west where an annual chili cookoff spices up more than just the tastebuds.
Every year since 1967, the greatest chili cooks descend upon the ghost town of Terlingua, Texas. The once budding mining community is now little more than a few abandoned buildings but turns into a metropolis of chili aficionados for the first Saturday in November.
Stories archived at SMU’s Jones Film Library show WFAA reporters hopping on planes to travel to the desert where the chili concoctions were spared little when it came to ingredients. Razorback chili, cowboy chili, two-alarm chili, chili laced with rattlesnake, armadillo lizard, pork, beef, and lamb just to name a few.
But as reporter Doug Fox adamantly pointed out, never beans.
And the hijinks were not limited to a bowl of red. In 1968, a couple of masked desperadoes stole the ballot box and another gentleman was “chili’d and feathered” for some unknown crime against chili.