About National Tortilla Day

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National Tortilla Chip Day celebrates the tortilla chip.

November 29, 1907, is the day the Tortilla Chips inventor Rebecca Webb-Carranza was born in Durango, Mexico. Her family immigrated to the United States when she was a child.

Carranza married in 1931, and the family ran a Mexican delicatessen in Los Angeles specializing in homemade tortillas. Sometime in the early 1940s, the Carranza family held a party, and she needed appetizers. Resourceful, Carranza decided rather than throw out the scrapings from the tortillas in their factory, she cut the scraps into wedges, fried them, and served them at a party. The tortilla chips were a hit with her family and friends. Soon she began selling the chips for ten cents a bowl out of the family shop. Film crews and others in the entertainment industry were regular customers, and word of the new snack spread. The tortilla chip was born.

Though she created the tortilla chip and the business expanded in 1967, the family was forced to close their chip factory in Long Beach, California. Larger corporations perceived the potential in the chip and were able to outproduce the family-owned business at a lower cost, driving them out of business.

Carranza had to work into her 80s, bagging groceries and assisting with the US census. Though the creator of the market and the tortilla chip, she died poor in money but rich in family. She left behind 12 grandchildren, 19 great-grandchildren, and two great-great-grandchildren.

In the mid-1990s, Carranza was among the recipients of the Golden Tortilla, an award created to honor Mexican food industry innovators by the Azteca Milling company.

Rebecca Webb-Carranza died on January 19, 2006, at 98.

I cannot figure out if February 24 is the anniversary of the party or something else; it's not the birthday or death of its inventor. No patent or copyright is present today, so why National Tortilla Chip Day falls on this day is unknown.