Terlingua is a mining district and census-designated place in the remote southwestern corner of Brewster County, Texas, near the Rio Grande and the Mexican state of Chihuahua. It sits close to the villages of Study Butte and Lajitas and to the western entrance of Big Bend National Park. The area's modern story began in the mid-1880s with the discovery of cinnabar, the ore from which mercury is extracted, which transformed a quiet river settlement into one of the country's leading quicksilver-mining districts. In the 1910s and 1920s, at the height of the boom, as many as 2,000 people lived in Terlingua, which boasted a post office, company store, and hotel. When mercury prices collapsed and the mines closed, the town emptied, leaving behind the adobe and rock ruins that define the Terlingua Ghost Town today. A small number of residents remained, and the town's revival began in earnest in 1967 with the first Terlingua Chili Cookoff, an event that earned Terlingua the title "Chili Capital of the World" and later split into two competing November cookoffs that together draw tens of thousands of visitors. Today Terlingua is best known as a base camp for Big Bend National Park, one of the least-visited and most spectacular of the national parks. Visitors come to raft the Rio Grande, hike desert and mountain trails, and observe some of the darkest night skies in the United States. The community's remaining landmarks — the Starlight Theatre restaurant and saloon, the Terlingua Trading Company, and the Big Bend Holiday Hotel — anchor a small but distinctive year-round community. Daily life here is defined by distance and self-reliance. Alpine, the Brewster County seat, lies roughly eighty miles to the north, and the nearest major cities and commercial airports are several hours away. Students attend the single K-12 campus of the Terlingua Common School District at Big Bend High School. For residents, Terlingua offers an independent, desert way of life set against one of Texas's most dramatic landscapes.