Rock sports were built in the dirt by people who never stopped to write any of it down. Courses were flagged by hand. Rulebooks were rewritten between events. Within a single generation, most of that history existed only in the memories of the people who lived it — and in boxes of magazines, score sheets and photographs nobody had ever catalogued.

The Rock Motorsports Hall of Fame exists to change that. We are dedicated to preserving the rich history and celebrating the pioneers of rock-based motorsports: the drivers, engineers, fabricators, promoters, journalists and advocates who built competitive and recreational rock crawling and rock racing out of nothing.

Ranch Pratt: from motocross to Moab

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Co-founder Ranch Pratt grew up in Salt Lake City and started racing motocross at six years old, then competed professionally for a decade. Four-wheeling he wanted no part of. His father-in-law kept inviting him to Moab in an old Toyota pickup, and Ranch kept saying no. “My perception of it was wrong,” he admits. “I perceived it as just a bunch of drunks trying to hammer up a dirt hill.”

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Then he watched a light-blue CJ-7 running a single locker pick its way up Kane Creek. “I was blown away. I just got bit by the bug.” He bought a 1978 CJ-5 off a golf course maintenance crew, put in a Lock-Right and 31s, and pointed it at Moab Rim and Pritchett Canyon.

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The bug became a career. Ranch talked his way into a job at MEPCO, Utah’s largest Jeep parts house, and went on to run it. When Jeep replaced the leaf-sprung YJ with the coil-sprung TJ and the aftermarket had nothing to offer, Ranch co-founded TeraFlex in 1996 to build what didn’t exist. The company grew past 300 employees.

The event that hadn’t happened yet

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In the late 1990s a magazine editor named Phil Howell had sketched out a rock crawling competition he never got around to running. Ranch bought it from him — an event that had never taken place. In 1998 he put roughly sixty teams into Chokecherry Canyon outside Farmington, New Mexico, under the banner of the American Rock Crawlers Association. Goodyear liked what it saw enough to underwrite a full series the next year.

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ARCA turned rock crawling into a profession. Ranch put a $20,000 purse on the line at every event — “and everything changed.” He took the series to Cedar City, Vernal, Las Cruces and Moab, and built a man-made course on foam blocks in the middle of the SEMA show floor. When Walker Evans showed up at Vernal in a tube-chassis buggy instead of a bodied truck and won, the entire field followed him and the rulebook had to be rewritten around it. ARCA became RCAA, and then UROC — which by 2006 had the largest booth in SEMA history and coverage in the New York Times, the Washington Post and on CBS Evening News.

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Rich Klein Jr. grew up in rock motorsports, working alongside his father, Rich “Big Rich” Klein Sr., in W.E. Rock—World Extreme Rock Crawling. Over time, Rich Jr. took on much of the series’ production and gained firsthand experience in the people, events and competition that shaped the sport.

He later created Trail Hero and developed it into one of the nation’s largest recreational off-road trail-riding events, bringing together trail recreation, competition, industry participation and the off-road community.

His father’s involvement in the sport dates back to 1982, when Big Rich first experienced the Rubicon Trail. While managing a tire store in Cedar City, he helped ARCA train its judges before returning to California and launching CalROCS, which later became W.E. Rock. He advocated for improved safety measures, including helmets for spotters and judges, window nets and firesuits. He also published 4Low Magazine and, since 2020, has recorded more than 330 episodes of Conversations with Big Rich, creating one of the deepest oral histories in the sport.

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For nearly two decades, Ranch Pratt and Big Rich operated rival rock-crawling series. Rich Jr. experienced much of that history from the W.E. Rock side and eventually carried it forward through his own leadership and events. Ranch and Rich Jr. therefore bring together different sides of the sport’s history, along with decades of firsthand experience involving its competitors, builders, innovators, events and organizations.

Together, Ranch Pratt and Rich Klein Jr. founded the Rock Motorsports Hall of Fame in 2024.

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The Rock Motorsports Hall of Fame launched on October 2, 2024, at the Trail Hero gala at Sand Hollow, Utah — founded by Ranch Pratt and his wife, Dana Zamalloa, alongside Rich Klein Jr. of Trail Hero and Brandi Klein.  Its inaugural class, inducted in October 2025, honored Walker Evans — posthumously, following his death that August — along with John Currie and Shannon Campbell, and named the first Living Legends of Rock Motorsports.

The Hall of Fame is based at Best Off-Road, Ranch and Dana’s company at 521 North 1200 West in Orem, Utah. That is where the archives live — the catalogs, the patches, the magazine features, the rigs — and we put them in front of people through inductions, exhibits, the Legends Run and the annual gala.

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The people who built this sport are still here. We intend to get their stories on the record while they are.

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Thank you for joining us on this ride!