Eastern 4 Wheelers started way back in 1987. Dave Brill had just purchased a shiny, new, Toyota 4 Runner. His cousin, John Mantzaris, had just purchased a new Jeep Wrangler. Together, they set out to go wheeling but hadn’t a clue of where to go. Figuring out early that there was power in numbers, they set out to creating flyer’s to drop on unsuspecting fellow four wheel drive trucks’ windshields.
The first person to call them up was Alan Abbott and quickly followed by Jimmy Zuppe and Bill Hansen of Turnpike Tire and Auto. Another call from Bill McCarthy of SVE Performance and there were suddenly 6 people who all wanted to go wheeling. Between the 6 of them, they searched for old roads and trails by heading to town libraries and pouring over topo maps.
Their numbers grew slowly over the next couple of years. Then, in 1990, John and Dave and a couple of other club members were down at the Bloomsburg Jamboree in PA. There they met up with Rudy Shoneck of the East Coast 4WD Association. EC4WDA had a booth and was promoting organized 4 Wheeling,and selling tickets for a fiberglass Jeep body raffle. Soon after that meeting, E4W joined up with EC4WDA and the ball started rolling.
In 1992 we formed the EC4WDA’s Northeast Region D. The next year, we hosted our first official Region D Event with the 2 other Region clubs. That event would become the Northeast 4WD Trailfest. That event flourished for several years until external politics pulled it apart.
E4W then decided to take its annual club trail ride to Florida MA and create Florida Vacation.
That event still thrives today!
The club has gone through several presidents and hundreds of members.
Dave Brill was the original President. In the time in between, Stacey Smith, Alan Laidlaw, Paul Taranto, Raimo Bachmann and Andy Litrenta, and others, have all been presidents.
We assembled the largest group of volunteers for two of the largest clean ups in New England, taking 35 junk cars off of a local mountain on one occasion and cutting up and removing a boat and small sloop from Fayerweather Island off of Bridgeport on another.
We have done inclement weather transportation for doctors, nurses and other emergency personnel throughout the years.
In 2007, we celebrated our 20th Anniversary.
In the last 20+ years we have gone from just a couple of places to wheel, to locations all over New England, we have access to multiple pieces of private property for our own club and have access to other parcels through our EC4WDA Northeast Region & NOVA sister clubs.
Although we have had some bumps and scrapes along the way, we are re-energized and ready for the future!