Texas has a long history with chili, but the tradition of the chili cookoff was born only in 1967, when the reputation of Texas chili was on the line. Publicly, the spark of the war came when a New York author and humorist named H. Allen Smith wrote an article titled "Nobody Knows More About Chili Than I Do," which riled up Texans. Not only was Allen a New Yorker, but he was born in Illinois! Texans were scandalized that Smith made chili with beans and bell pepper. Smith thought it heresy that Texans added corn flour to their chili to thicken it.
However, Texas columnist Frank Tolbert had already considered a chili cookoff to promote both his book A Bowl of Red and race car driver Carroll Shelby's ranch in Terlingua, a ghost town at the time. Smith's challenge was just what he needed, so the cookoff was planned under the auspices of the Chili Appreciation Society International to be a match between Smith and Wick Fowler, developer of Wick Fowler’s Famous Two-Alarm Chili Kit.
You can find an account of that first chili cookoff in a 1967 article at Sports Illustrated (contains racist stereotypes in one paragraph). Afterward, Smith moved to Texas permanently, where he was forever branded as an outsider. He also wrote a book about the cookoff, The Great Chili Confrontation, and Tolbert updated his book to include it.
The Original Terlingua International Championship Chili Cookoff is still held every year. You can argue about the "international" part, since the winners are overwhelmingly from Texas. -via Metafilter, where you'll find Tolbert's chili recipe, plus lots of chili recipes shared in the comments.
