The Terlingua Chili Cookoff is a contest of chili chefs held in Terlingua, Texas, an abandoned mining town near the Big Bend desert area in the southwestern part of the state. More than 200 cooks from as many as 30 states and occasionally from foreign countries show up to prepare the official state dish, and thousands of spectators drive or fly in. Humorists Wick Fowler and H. Allen Smith staged the first cookoff in 1967, deciding to locate it in the hot desert because it was a contest for a hot dish. Discuss
Source: The Free Dictionary