United States
Terlingua
A ghost town at Earth's edge where eccentrics throw an annual chilli cook-off in the dust.
Crumbling adobe and rusted mercury flasks bake in the west Texas sun where the Chisos Mining Company once ran. Terlingua is less a town than a state of mind: a porch, a cold beer, a handful of desert eccentrics and a horizon that goes on into Mexico.
Quicksilver was struck here in the mid-1880s, and Terlingua boomed on mercury until the mines played out once the Second World War ended, and the people simply left. The ruins sat empty until river runners, artists and desert rats drifted in during the 1960s, drawn by cheap land, a total absence of rules and Big Bend next door. In 1967 the ghost town was crowned the Chili Capitol of the World, and every November rival championship cook-offs still fill the dust with smoke and secret recipes. The old company store now anchors the town's social life with supper and live music on the porch, and the miners' cemetery on the edge of town, still active and still sacred, glows with candles each Día de los Muertos.
Solo
Take the porch at sunrise with black coffee and watch the desert light move; by the second morning the regulars will assume you live here.
Friends
Float Santa Elena Canyon by day, eat championship-grade chilli by night and argue on the porch until the stars take over.
- The ghost town was crowned Chili Capitol of the World in 1967, and rival championship cook-offs still fire up in the ruins every November.
- Quicksilver built the town in the 1880s and abandoned it after the war; the adobe ruins and mine works still stand in the desert.
- The old mining company store is now the town's gathering place, its porch facing the Chisos Mountains as the sky darkens.
- The miners' cemetery remains active and beloved, its headstones candlelit each Día de los Muertos.
Championship chilli from rival November cook-offs that treat beans as a moral failing and recipes as state secrets.
Supper and live music at the old company store, where river guides and geologists share the porch.
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