Terlingua is a ghost town in Texas where the world’s chili champions are made. But many of those Terlingua International Chili champions say their favorite chili stage isn’t in the Texas desert at all.
It’s in the tiny town of Chugwater, population 175, where even the best of the best are willing to drive a thousand miles or more on a chili pilgrimage that’s been going strong for decades, raising money for local nonprofits and quietly serving as one of Wyoming’s biggest, word-of-mouth tourism wins.
Many contestants pair their chili fest trip with subsequent Yellowstone and Devils Tower adventures.
This Father’s Day weekend marked the 40th annual Chugwater Chili Cook-off, which annually turns the tiny high plains town into a blow-out chili fest for a single day.
Other chili competitions “just don’t have the audience participation like you do here, where everyone comes and tastes your chili,” 2015 Terlingua winner James Burns told Cowboy State Daily. “This is one of the few where that happens and it’s just amazing.
They’ve set themselves apart from all the other chili championships.”
It was a 15-hour drive for Burns, one that he made over two days. Burns’ first Chugwater Chili Cook-off was in 2016, fresh off his 2015 Terlingua win.
No one, he added, was ever a less-likely chili champion.
“At the time, I had this band,” he said with a chuckle. “And the lady who promoted us and did our shirts and everything said, ‘I’ve got a chili cook-off coming up with the VFW, and I want you to cook for it'.”
This is the halfway point of a very long line to get into the Chugwater Chili Cook-off. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
A car show is annually part of the Chugwater Chili Cook-off in Chugwater, Wyoming. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
Brian Munoz, left, and his girlfriend, Kimberly Dossier taste one of the chilis entered in the 40th annual Chugwater Chili Cook-off held on Father's Day weekend. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily)
Started Online
Burns told her he had no idea how to cook chili for dinner, much less for a competition. However, she insisted, and he needed her to keep doing the band’s marketing.
“So, I went out and I bought all this stuff,” Burns said. “And it was all the wrong stuff. I bought, like, a cast-iron pan, which you don’t need.”
He quickly realized he was in way over his head when it came to chili competitions. Eventually, he asked her if a website or something could help guide him.
“So that’s how I got started,” he said. “I went to that website and found out what to really use.”
Even then, he still faced a steep learning curve. From March to June, he cooked at all kinds of chili contests and never scored a single point.
Finally, it all just came together.
“The first point I got, I went straight to first place,” he said.
That took him to Terlingua, which he also won. He has been winning chili competitions ever since.
This year, a decade after his first Chugwater Chili experience, he was back. Not for himself, however. He had chili champion friends who had yet to experience the tiny town’s event.
“I tell everyone you’ve got to go here,” he said. “It’s just so amazing. It’s a bucket-list item. All the chili cooks have got this on their bucket list.
“Things happen, they can’t get here all the time,” he added. “But this year, we’ve got between 20 and 25 people who came up here from Texas.”
The Big Chili Explosion
Burns isn’t exaggerating when it comes to the scale of Chugwater’s giant-sized Chili Cook-off in Staat’s Park.
The town might be tiny, but its cook-off explodes its population from 175 to thousands for a single day, raising money that helps support many of the town’s nonprofits all year. The event has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to support its fire department, historical group, economic development and school organizations such as FFA and FBLA.
Cars will line the streets leading into Chugwater and fill up all the side streets. Business parking lots quickly swell with cars, too, as well as dusty fields where no one would normally park.
The C.H. Brown family donates time and teams for free wagon rides to and from the cook-off, lending a little charm to what would otherwise be a lengthy trek on foot from these repurposed fields to the park where contestants from all over the world gather to vie for one of three top spots in the red chili competition. That is not just for bragging rights. It’s also an automatic invitation to Terlingua.
“The public here is just phenomenal,” 2019 Terlingua winner Kathryn Williams of Texas told Cowboy State Daily. “If you look at the population sign of Chugwater, it says 175, but in the first 33 minutes, we had given away 200 tasting cups of chili, so there’s obviously more than just the population of Chugwater here. The support is just unbelievable.”
Williams paired her first trip to Chugwater with a tour of Yellowstone once the competition is over, after which she’ll be in Colorado for a competition as well. She planned everything a year in advance.
“If you’re from the Gulf Coast of Texas and you’re not used to the cold, and you’ve never seen a mountain, you’ve never seen snow — this was just an opportunity for us to come see a different landscape,” she said. “It’s also a chance to meet different people and see if Texas-style chili works in Wyoming.”
She’s not alone. Many other visiting teams also told Cowboy State Daily they pair this weekend with a larger Western road trip that will include other bucket-list stops such as Yellowstone, Devil’s Tower, Deadwood, and many other places.
Amy Kennison looks on while family members place samples of chili out for the long lines of people coming through to taste their red and green chilis. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
Some of the chili royalty at Chugwater Chili posed for a photo by Cowboy State Daily. From left, 2015 Terlingua winner James Burns, 2025 Terlingua winner Greg Lindsey, 2019 Tirlingua winner Kathryn Williams and 2016 Florida State Champion Bret Harder. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
From left Sherree Nichols and Angie Gaines are enjoying their first-ever Chugwater Chili Cook-off with James Burns, who attended his first Chugwater event in 2016. The event in the tiny town has become a bucket-list item for some of the world's best chili cooks. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily)
Family Reunions Around Chili Pots
For veteran competitor Jerry Arnold, who lives in Nebraska but is originally from Torrington, the Chugwater Chili Cook-off is much more than just a cooking competition. For him, it is a big family group hug, built around chili pots and pans.
Arnold's wife, daughter-in-law, son, daughter and her children have all joined the chili fold. They come together over chili contests like other families gather for Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Arnold won his first chili contest in 1999.
“They had a pokerfest,” he recalled. “I and my wife went over there — I wasn’t married yet — but I won, which really surprised me. I thought, ‘Wow!’ And so I went to Crawford (Nebraska) and won again. I was like, ‘Are you kidding me? I’m gonna go to Scotts Bluff and win, I’m gonna go to the nationals and I’ll be famous'.”
Arnold has been invited to Terlingua a half-dozen times or so with his family members, who cook under the name Prairie Fire Chili. So far, they have not clinched a world title, though they have frequently placed in regional qualifiers, including the Chugwater Cook-off.
“There’s a lot of competition here,” Arnold said. “If you place in the top 10 here, you’re doing really well. My daughter-in-law, she got second in green.”
Arnold’s only complaint about Chugwater is that he never gets a chance to try the other competitors’ chili. He’s frequently next to a guy who has won Chugwater multiple times and has always “wanted to go over there and try his chili,” but he’s always too busy serving his own.
Cooking For The Crowd
While some of the contestants are laser-focused on winning their shot at Terlingua, others come to win the crowd.
Count Cheyenne construction worker Casey Medina among those. He’s earned the People’s Choice honor multiple times, and he, too, sees the event as a big family tradition.
His recipe is built around pork and Anaheim chilis, slow-cooked with onions, garlic and tomatoes. His secret weapon is just letting all the natural flavors shine through.
“No secret seasonings,” he told Cowboy State Daily. “No added ingredients really.”
Just a little salt to help bring it all together.
The recipe might seem modest, but the quantities of the natural ingredients are anything but. Medina estimates he cooks 35 gallons of chili in his quest to win the People’s Choice award, and he will start a week in advance, cutting the meat, roasting peppers, and getting all the prep work done.
The final cook takes an additional three hours on site.
It’s a big effort for one weekend, but it’s worth it for this crowd, he said, waving a hand at all the people milling about, enthusiastically trying the different chili recipes.
“This is just a good time as a family,” Medina added. “It’s just something to show off that we do have a good recipe. It’s something to do, and it’s a great event. I wish more people would come up.”
From left Sherree Nichols and Angie Gaines are enjoying their first-ever Chugwater Chili Cook-off with James Burns, who attended his first Chugwater event in 2016. The event in the tiny town has become a bucket-list item for some of the world's best chili cooks. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
The line to get into the Chugwater Chili Cook-off's chili contestant area is long. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
From left, Robert Ganzenmuller, Casey Medina, and Kat Medina pose for a picture at the Chugwater Chili Cook-off. It's become a family tradition for them to participate in this Father's Day weekend event. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily)
Why Chugwater Beats Terlingua
For Cheyenne caterer Amy Kennison, the Chugwater Chili Cook-off was meant to be a one-off competition in 2024, a way to get out and meet new people and promote her Wyoming catering business.
June, typically, is abusy month for her, as it’s wedding season. But, as it happened, in 2024, her schedule was a bit light. She’d heard of the Chugwater Chili Cook-off for decades, but had just never had the opportunity before then to enter it.
“We never had any thought that we were going to actually win,” she said. “We were just hoping to maybe place, and thought it would be fun.”
In fact, they were pretty sure they weren’t going to win — given the kind of competition that was at the event, which included many of the world’s top chili champions.
As the winners were announced, name after name rolled out belonging to other teams. Kennison and her family were actually packing up to leave when they suddenly heard their name called. Their chili, made from Wyoming-grown beef, pork and deer they raise and hunt themselves, had won first place in the red chili category.
That meant an automatic invite to Terlingua, which they decided to do as a family.
It was an “interesting” experience, Kennison said — and not one she wants to repeat.
“This cook-off is way better,” she said of Chugwater’s festival. “At Terlingua, people don’t come to your booth to sample your chili like they do here.
“And the tasting was at noon,” she added. “But they opened the beer garden at 8 a.m., so everyone couldn’t walk or talk by 10 a.m.”
The excessive drinking by some contestants and other guests created a decidedly non-family-like atmosphere, which Kennison and her family didn’t embrace.
“It was very weird,” she said. “You just came, and everyone made a little pot of chili like this in their trailer and filled a cup and delivered it up to the judges. That was it.
“It wasn’t fun, it wasn’t kid-friendly at all, and I don’t think we’ll ever go back. It was also kind of vulgar — like Burning Man for chili.”
Terlingua might be the sport’s most prestigious title, but for Kennison and many other competitors, Chugwater offers something they value even more — a family-friendly place where their kids feel welcome and a tiny town turns into a chili mecca.
Come Together Right Now Over Chili
For first-time Chugwater Chili Cook-off guest Kimberly Doshier, who grew up near Sacramento, California, and now lives in Cheyenne, Chugwater felt a lot bigger than she expected for a town of 175.
She’d figured it would be something pretty scaled back. Until, that is, she drove into the car-lined streets and found herself at what felt like a “really big farmers market” with tent after tent of cooks and vendors, live music, and families lining up to taste.
“Being from California originally, I’m kind of used to a giant farmers market,” she said. “So this kind of reminds me of that a little bit.”
Her nose had been “going crazy” since she’d arrived, overwhelmed by the mix of spices, smoke, and grilled foods that were scenting the air.
“The word ‘disappointment’ does not come to mind when it comes to this event,” she said with a big smile. “It’s been a blast. This is definitely what a community coming together really is.”
A Father’s Day Plan
Forty years ago, it might have been difficult to imagine that a chili cook-off in a tiny Wyoming town would become a pilgrimage for Terlingua world champions, with caravans of Texans, Floridans, Nebraskans, and others planning their entire Father’s Day weekend around it.
But that’s exactly what the Chugwater event has become. Gallons and gallons of chili flow throughout the day from huge over-sized pots into tiny sample cups that are then tasted by tongues tingling with all the chili flavor they can stand.
For Burns and other Terlingua champions or hopefuls who have made this trek, Chugwater’s event is counted among the best of the best for its fun and its atmosphere.
And it’s given Wyoming families a chance to try the world’s best chilis in one special location on one special day each year — a Wyoming Father’s Day to remember.
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.
