About Oregon Trail Rally
Oregon Trail Rally
Oregon Rally Group was formed in 1995 by Portland area rallyists. The founding members came from a variety of backgrounds. Some were involved in stage rallies from abroad, some competed years ago in the Puget Sound area, and others came from local Time Speed Distance rally backgrounds with love for aggressive forest rally action. With the help of our more experienced stage rally brethren up in the Olympia area which was once a round of the World Rally Championship, ORG set out to establish a base for rally activity in and around Oregon. The first ORG run stage rally was a one-day event on the northwest regional rally calendar and continued the name Oregon Trail Rally in honor of the first ever stage a rally in Oregon. Since then, the ORG-run OTR has become a multi-day national event that draws competitors from across the country and around the world.
The original Oregon Trail Rally was a one-off national event in 1984 organized by the Portland District Motor Club, with Nick Moore as the Rallymaster with stages run in the forestlands east of Molalla (now the Weyerhaeuser Molalla Tree Farm). The event included some of America's most prominent names in rallying at the time such as John Buffum, Rod Millen, and Doug Shepherd with John Buffum taking the inaugural win.