History time:
was formed right here in CO by Dave Nay of Colorado Springs, largely out of the Colorado-XJ forum on Egroups. That's the way I remember it anyway.. Fred and a few others can probably confirm that.
First time I'd heard that version, but I won't argue..... I signed up with
about a year after it'd been started and got my "history" lesson forced on me with all that drama that had been going on in the early years.... It's my recollection that Beezil and others close to him (Great Lakes Jeep Thing and XJ Treehouse forums) were claiming they "fathered" the club...... and as I recall, the initial incorporation documents/charter were filed in Illinois...... initially stemming from Forum Fest in '98 where lots of XJ forum guys got together and brainstormed the early creation of
...... :dunno:
Well, here it is in the By Laws:
"Article II - Status
Section 1: Incorporation
The Corporation shall be incorporated in the State of Illinois as a not-for-profit corporation, effective 7 January 1999."
I recall Colorado-XJ List being a yahoo group that was in existence a while before
..... and it continued on almost as a "chapter" kind of forum for some time after
, but totally unaffiliated. Hell I still have a CO-XJ List t-shirt....... I think ultimately the Vbulletin forum allure won over most of the Colorado-XJ List guys...... using that yahoo group thing sucked. But yeah, Dave Nay, Aaron Storms, Grant Barclay, JohnJohn and maybe even Led and several others were grounded in Colorado-XJ List before
became big....
I kinda remember a thread here in the Chapter having been created about all this...... might have to try to find it.
Some discussion about the early formation is in a few posts in this thread..... even one from Fred on pg 5:
http://www.naxja.org/forum/showthread.php?t=1049122&highlight=colorado-xj
Also worth noting...... no member of
will show a join date earlier than 2002. The first server/host being used crashed completely in early '02 and took all the archived forum stuff including the original member list with it...... I joined in late '99.....
Wow....... this has been one helluva hijack...... :laugh: