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 rally from abroad, some competed years ago in the Puget Sound area, and still others came from local Time Speed Distance rally backgrounds with a 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 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 biggest names in rallying at the time such as John Buffum, Rod Millen, and Doug Shepherd with John Buffum taking the inaugural win.

Subaru Motorsports USA’s David Higgins has won the most Oregon Trail Rally events with successive titles from 2011 through 2016, and wins again in 2018 and 2019.  During those years OTR has featured the Friday evening super special stages at PIR, the high speed wide open rolling county roadways through miles of picturesque wheat fields and farm lands in Wasco County, the densely forested ridgeline roads of Hood River county, and more recently the technical twisting cliffside roads across the river in Klickitat County, Washington. 

Go to the volunteers page today, and register to be a part of the event.