By Erik Sietsema
Last weekend, the Big Sandy Volunteer Fire Department hosted its 71st annual Chili Feed. When I realized the fundraiser has been going for more than seven decades, I started wondering how it all began. A little research turned up the origins of the Chili Feed and some of the history of our local fire department.
The Town of Big Sandy has actually had two fire departments. Nobody knows exactly when the first one was founded, but it was dissolved in 1938, and the town went without an organized fire department for the next decade. Several people pushed to start a new one, including the editor of the Mountaineer, who ran an editorial campaign calling for a new department.
The pre-1938 fire department had no fire hall. The Great Northern Railroad let the firemen store their gear in the Big Sandy depot. That gear was mostly a two-wheeled chemical fire extinguisher. They eventually built their own storage shed for their hose cart, which they hooked up to fire hydrants when it was time to fight a fire.
When the department reorganized in 1948, it bought its first fire truck. By 1950, the community had come together and raised the money to build the first Public Safety Building, which housed the fire department, the ambulance corps and the police department.
The local fire department has always paid its operating costs through community support. Its first big recurring fundraiser was the Fireman’s Ball, which started in 1948. The ball was billed as “THE social event of the year,” offering everything from “the best in dance music to the finest entertainment.” It featured plays, games of chance and “top performers” for the community to enjoy. The first Fireman’s Ball raised $600, which helped finish the first Public Safety Building. The ball eventually faded away, but the firemen’s fundraising tradition is still going strong.
The first Firemen’s Chili Feed was held in 1955 and brought in $282.11, roughly $3,500 in today’s dollars. The Chili Feed has been an annual tradition ever since.
That made me wonder how the event became so closely tied to the Big Sandy football schedule. The earliest mention of the feed in the Mountaineer says it started at 4 p.m. that year, a time chosen specifically around the kickoff of the Friday night football game.
Over the years, the Chili Feed became the unofficial Pioneer homecoming game. With Spirit Week and other festivities added, the week of the feed is now a town-wide celebration that’s bigger than the feed itself. I couldn’t find out exactly when that change happened, or when events like Spirit Week were added to the schedule.
Information for this article came from several sources, most notably http://www.bigsandyfire.com/history.html, which has an extensive history of the local fire department. It’s fascinating and worth a look if you’re interested in local history. If you know when the Chili Feed was combined with homecoming, please let me know. I’d also welcome any other details about the department’s history for future articles.
