Our History

In November of 2009, I got an idea. I wanted to share my love and knowledge of Arizona with others that might be interested in it. After searching around on Google, I came across a simple website builder where I created the first rendition of AZOFFROAD. It was azoffroad.webs.com and it was small. It slowly grew and at its peak, it had four (that’s right, only four) offroad trails and one day trip. The tiny little website grew slowly and even had its own unsuccessful store at one point. 

Just two months later, on a recommendation from a friend, I checked out another, better website builder. I liked what I saw and just a day later, on January 11, 2010, I decided to buy the domain azoffroad.net. Very quickly, we added tons of content including more offroad trails, and additional day & weekend trips. AZOFFROAD 2.0 was world’s better than the initial site build. We added sponsors just a few short months after we got started, and that too proved to be successful. 

Throughout 2010, azoffroad.net continued to grow. With over 15,000 visitors in the first year, this was a big step in the right direction. Over the next 8 years, we traveled the trails more, added some new projects & vehicles, and launched a Youtube channel to pair visual content with the information on the website. Eventually, our site was home to 95 complete trail descriptions, a host of different overland adventures, and over 65 abandoned/historic site pages.

In December of 2018, I knew that our website needed to be modernized and updated once again. The website was out-dated and lacked the visual ‘bang’ that I always envisioned. I moved the site for a third and final time to its current home here on Squarespace. The project was a massive undertaking, and many hours were spent transferring content and building the new pages. AZOFFROAD 3.0 launched in January of 2019. Today, the site continues to grow and expand as we continue to share our travels and see even more of what Arizona has to offer. We are proud to now offer over 100 full trails, 75+ abandoned site descriptions, and details on our Grand Cherokee build & overland trip reports.

My family has been taking pictures in Arizona for over four generations and my great-grandfather helped construct Glen Canyon Dam. Perhaps that’s why I have such a strong interest in Arizona. I hope through this website, I can share some of my interest with you and encourage you to get out and see what Arizona really has to offer. 

Thank you to all of our family, friends, sponsors, supporters, and visitors to our website for all of your help in growing this website into what it is today.

Scotty Koch,

Webmaster/Founder

azoffroad.net