Winners of the 2023 Texas Hot Link Festival cooking competition pose for a photo. Saturday's Texas Hot Link Festival will include cooking competitions, a car show, live music and more. (Courtesy photo)

Camp County will pay tribute Saturday to its hot link heritage — and the memory of the hometown man who revolutionized automotive racing.

Carroll Shelby, cars and cuisine will be the centerpieces of the Texas Hot Link Festival, which is expected to bring thousands of people to Pittsburg to chow down on the food that gave the town a savory spot in the palettes and minds of meat-lovers.

Automotive enthusiasts will congregate at a car show, chili cook-off and historical marker dedication honoring Shelby, the Camp County native who designed race cars and was known for the brand of sports cars that bears his name. And a man who worked with Shelby will speak to guests during a private dinner that evening.

“It’ll be good, not only for hot link lovers,” said event president Sabin Warrick, whose family owns the renowned Pittsburg Hot Link Restaurant.

A Pittsburg ‘homecoming’

The first hot link was served in Pittsburg in 1897. Today, the town is the Hot Link Capital of Texas.

The Hot Link Festival will take place in downtown Pittsburg, 212 Market St., from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Saturday. It’ll feature live music, cooking competitions, the car show, a block party for authors, crafts, vendors and “plenty of hot links,” according to the event’s website.

About 150 cars, including Ford Mustangs and Shelby Cobras, are expected to be in the car show, which runs from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at 237 College St. For information about registering a vehicle for the show, call (903) 253-3213.

Local authors will sell their books during the Artisan Alley Writer’s Block Party, a new feature of the festival, at the Alley near 125 Jefferson St. in downtown Pittsburg.

Cooking competitions will feature various cultural foods from around the globe, and bands will play throughout the day.

Warrick said people who are from Pittsburg or have visited the town enjoy returning for the festival, which began in 2019.

“It’s kind of a homecoming, and opportunity to come back and participate,” he said.

Mainly, it’s a way to pay tribute to the people who made hot links a staple of the county, including Warrick’s family.

Hot links became a common Camp County cuisine in 1897, when Charlie Hasselback settled in the area, according to a story posted on Warrick’s restaurant website.

Other families, including the Warricks, opened their own hot link joints, filling the bellies of railroaders, truckers, families and more. The city’s reputation for the traditionally German dish grew, and the tradition lives on. Today, Pittsburg Hot Links are an internationally recognized brand, event officials said in a news release.

“It also gives us an opportunity to reach out to other people that don’t know about Pittsburg,” Warrick said. “When you talk about Carroll Shelby, a lot of people know who he is but don’t know he’s from here.”

Dinner, other events honor Shelby

Several aspects of the festival will honor Camp County’s racecar-driving son, Shelby, a legendary river and automotive designer who died in 2012.

Shelby, who was born in Leesburg near Pittsburg, drove the winning car in the 1959 24-hour Le Mans, a widely celebrated endurance race in France. He designed the Ford GT40, which won the race from 1966 through 1969, and went on to create the Shelby Cobra line of sports cars.

Shelby also created his own line of Texas chili and started a chili cook-off in Terlingua in southwest Texas in the 1960s. He also helped start the International Chili Society.

Saturday’s Carroll Shelby Chili Cookoff, which began last year for what would have been Shelby’s 100th birthday, will honor that heritage. The Pittsburg cook-off is sanctioned by the Chili Appreciation Society International. Proceeds will benefit the Court Appointed Special Advocates of Titus, Camp and Morris counties, better known as CASA, which trains people to help abused and neglected children going through the court system.

The Northeast Texas Community College, home to the Carroll Shelby Automotive Program, will host a dinner at the NTCC Culinary Arts School’s Our Place Restaurant in downtown Pittsburg, 114 Jefferson St.

Tickets cost $50 per person and can be purchased online by visiting tinyurl.com/2k7jmk2d. Cocktails will be served at 5:30 p.m., with dinner being served at 6 p.m.

Jim Marietta, an original member of Shelby’s team, will speak during the dinner, said Ron Luellen, director of the automotive program.

“This is a pretty big player,” Luellen said.

Community members, Cobra drivers and more also will honor Shelby by attending the dedication of an official Texas Historical Marker at his grave at the cemetery in Leesburg.

At 2:30 p.m., drivers escorted by local police will drive along Texas 11 toward the cemetery. The lineup will begin at the junction of Texas Highway 11 and D.H. Abernathy Boulevard on the west side of Pittsburg.

Luellen said he hopes a lot of people will come out to celebrate Shelby and the festival.

“It’s a great honor to have it,” he said.

To learn more about the Hot Link Festival, visit https://texashotlinkfestival.com/.