The 1967 contest now has three heirs: CASI's championship at Rancho CASI, the Original Terlingua cook-off behind the old store, and the International Chili Society's World Championship. They broke apart in two stages, around 1974 and in 1983, and each side remembers the breaks differently.
Even the founding of CASI is told two ways. The Handbook of Texas says Tolbert founded the Chili Appreciation Society International soon after his book A Bowl of Red appeared. CASI credits George Haddaway as founder of an earlier society dating to 1949, and Sports Illustrated in 1967 gave the founding year as 1951.
The first break sent the championship to California. CASI's account says that in November 1974 Tolbert wrote a letter resigning from CASI and the Terlingua cook-off and invited Carroll Shelby to stage it in California, which CASI calls the birth of the ICS. John Raven tells it as a clash between Tolbert and C.V. Wood, the California cook who won in 1969 and 1971, after which Wood took the event west under the World Championship name. The ICS's own timeline says its articles and by-laws were drawn up in 1970 and that 1974 was the last year its championship was held in Terlingua. A 1983 UPI report put the start of the California group at 1976.
Texas carried on. Cooks agreed on a points system to qualify for Terlingua, and the event moved to Glen Pepper's Villa de la Mina, a short way up the road. CASI dates that move to 1977, as did UPI. Raven says the last cooking at the old town site was in 1982. CASI was incorporated on 6 October 1979 and reorganized in 1983, giving its Great Peppers a vote on directors and rule changes.
The second break came in 1983. Raven writes that cooks unhappy with Tolbert's loose style of running the show tried to unseat him, that the fight reached court over who owned the CASI name, and that the judge sided with the rebels. Tolbert moved his event to desert land behind the old Terlingua Store. That November UPI found two Terlingua cook-offs set for the same day, Tolbert's still using the CASI name. Tolbert told UPI he was being sued over "what I originated," and called the CASI event a California takeover.
The name World Championship had its own fight. UPI reported in 1983 that Shelby had obtained the copyright to "World's Championship Chili Cookoff" and that the ICS was suing Tolbert for infringing its title. The Big Bend Sentinel says Shelby sued for the title in 1982 and won. The ICS today marks the World Championship Chili Cook-off name as a registered trademark.
Tolbert died on 9 January 1984. CASI bought its own ranch, Rancho CASI de los Chisos, in 1990. In 2026 the CASI championship and the Original Terlingua cook-off each billed themselves as the 59th annual, both in Terlingua on the same first weekend of November. The ICS called its 2025 Indianapolis championship WCCC58.
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