Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Terlingua, TX

Terlingua is a census-designated place and famous ghost town in Brewster County in the Big Bend country of West Texas, near the Rio Grande and the communities of Lajitas and Study Butte, close to the Mexican state of Chihuahua.

The name Terlingua was applied to three settlements over time: the original Mexican village on Terlingua Creek, later called Terlingua Abaja, and the mining camps that borrowed its name.

Cinnabar, the ore from which mercury, or quicksilver, is extracted, was discovered in the Terlingua area in the mid-1880s, and Jack Dawson reportedly produced the district's first mercury in 1888.

The quicksilver boom built a town of about 2,000 people; by 1900 four mining companies were working the district, and by 1922 Terlingua produced nearly 40 percent of the entire nation's mercury supply.

The Terlingua district accounted for most United States quicksilver production through 1937, totaling almost 150,000 flasks of mercury.

Howard Perry's Chisos Mining Company, the district's giant, filed for bankruptcy on October 1, 1942, and falling prices forced all the mines to close by 1947, leaving Terlingua a ghost town.

The mineral terlinguaite was first found near California Hill in the Terlingua district, and the capped mines of California Hill, Rainbow, the 248 and Study Butte still dot the desert around the town.

Tourism revived Terlingua in the late 1960s and 1970s, and on the first Saturday of every November more than 10,000 chiliheads gather there for two rival chili cookoffs, the Chili Appreciation Society International cookoff and the Frank X. Tolbert-Wick Fowler World Chili Championship, established in 1967, when Terlingua was deemed the Chili Capitol of the World.

Carmaker Carroll Shelby, who owned a 220,000-acre ranch nearby, was among the founders of the original 1967 chili cookoff.

Surviving landmarks include St. Agnes Church, built in 1914, and the old Starlight Theatre, now a restaurant and live-music venue.