On 21 October 1967 a Texan and a New Yorker cooked chili in a ghost town and nobody won. Everyone agrees on the draw. Almost everything else, from who organized it to how many people came to why the third judge stopped, depends on who is telling it.
The quarrel began in print. In August 1967 the humorist H. Allen Smith published a Holiday magazine piece claiming nobody knew more about chili than he did. Frank X. Tolbert, a Dallas Morning News columnist, answered with weekly attacks, and Austin newspaperman Wick Fowler became Texas's champion. The cook-off took place at Terlingua, a near-empty mining town in the Big Bend, at noon on 21 October.
The earliest full account is Gary Cartwright's, in Sports Illustrated that December. He describes about 500 people at the porch of the Terlingua Inn, three blindfolded judges, and a vote called aloud by the matchmaker, Tom Tierney. Hallie Stillwell, a local justice of the peace and Smith's pick, voted for Smith. Floyd Schneider, a San Antonio brewery executive and Fowler's pick, voted for Fowler. The tie-breaker, Dallas attorney David Witts, took one spoonful, spat it out and pronounced himself unable to continue. Cartwright quotes him: "I declare a one-year moratorium in the world championship chili con carne cook off."
Cartwright's headline called the event a fix, and his story explains why. He wrote that CASI had issued the challenge and picked the tie-breaker. Witts was a CASI insider and half owner, with Carroll Shelby, of the ranch around the ghost town. Cartwright added that CASI only later learned that Stillwell was Smith's cousin. He also reported that Fowler had been sick all night with a virus.
Later tellings change the details. The Big Bend Sentinel, writing in 2024, places the cook-off on the porch of the Starlight Theatre and gives attendance estimates from 250 to 3,000. The Handbook of Texas says 250 people came and that Smith's challenge was aimed at Tolbert. John Raven's history adds that the first choice of outsider was the Hollywood restaurateur David Chasen, who fell ill, and in a later installment says the third judge claimed he had been poisoned.
Why did Witts stop? Texans, Cartwright noted, assumed it was Smith's bean-laced batch. Smith blamed the Texan chili. The Sentinel's version has Witts saying his taste buds were burned off and that, in the confusion, he could not remember which chili was which. CASI's own history says simply that his taste buds were ruined.
Each of today's three championships tells the story as its own beginning. CASI calls itself the original host of the 1967 event. The Original Terlingua cook-off credits Tolbert and Wick Fowler as founders. The International Chili Society lists Shelby, Tierney, Smith, Fowler, Witts, Tolbert and others as the pioneers of the first World Championship Chili Cook-off. All three agree it was a draw.
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