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tor of Parks and Recreation, Director
of Urban Housing, Inspector of Hides
and Commodore of the Terlingua Navy
were quickly conferred upon other
friends. Official looking business cards
and letterhead soon followed. Sporadic
meetings were held in some of the
tonier watering holes and restaurants
in Dallas and were usually followed by
a flurry of official sounding press re-
leases. Neale even edited a newsletter.
One issue carried a small blurb which
stated, “
Girls—don’t forget to sign up
now for the Terlingua Women’s Auxil-
iary Territorial Service
.”
A meeting in May 1967 was at-
tended by Tom Tierney, a friend of
Shelbys who worked for Ford in public
relations. When Witts asked him
what, exactly, it was that a P.R. man
did, Tierney responded with an exam-
ple. “
A good P.R. man could take a
ghost town like the one you own and
put it on the map.
” Someone else
asked how that could be done and
Tierney, without missing a breath,
said, “
Hold a chili cook-off there.
” And
that was how the whole chili cook-off
phenomena got its start.
A series of cleverly worded chal-
lenges made as part of a handful of
newspaper articles resulted in nearly
two hundred people turning up in Ter-
lingua on October 21, 1967 to crown a
chili champion. Among them were
hard core chili aficionados, members of
the Terlingua town council and dozens
of reporters representing
Time, The
Wall Street Journal, The Dallas Morn-
ing News, The New York Times,
Newsweek
and
Sports Illustrated
(which eventually carried a six-page
article reporting on the “event”). An
uneven dirt airstrip on the edge of
town (described as “Terlingua Interna-
tional Airport”) allowed most of the
participants to fly in, with Shelby
American’s DC-3 bringing most of
them. The World Championship Chili
Cook-Off soon gathered momentum,
mostly ginned-up by its own publicity.
Within ten years, attendance would
top 35,000. Several chili organizations
were spawned, among them the Inter-
national Chili Society which sprouted
a hundred local regions and sponsored
regional cook-offs. The World Finals
eventually moved to California and
became immersed in show business,
complete with celebrity judges, scant-
ily clad females and the accompanying
glitz. Today, tens of thousands of dol-
lars are funneled into various chari-
ties. And Terlingua is on the map.
One of the most entertaining Ter-
lingua stories was related by Bill
Neale. He and Shelby were attending
the 1966 Indianapolis 500. Just prior
to the race’s start they walked the
length of the grid, and when no one
was looking they applied a Terlingua
Racing Team decal to each race car.
Virtually every flat surface on the cars
were completely covered by sponsor
decals, so it was virtually impossible
for anyone to spot one which might not
belong. By the time Shelby and Neale
had covered the length of the pits they
somehow managed to put a Terlingua
decal on every car except one.... the car
that eventually won the race!
The SHELBY AMERICAN
Spring 2016 64
Shelby and Witts pose at the ranch’s en-
trance. Terlingua is truly one of the most
desolate places in the country. It makes
Afghanistan look like Maui.