History
Chartered October 15, 1961.
Sixty-five years of drives, meets, and the volunteers who showed up. A short and entirely partial history of the Cascade Region of the Porsche Club of America.
Founding
The fiftieth region in PCA, the second-oldest in Oregon.
The Porsche Club of America was founded in 1955 by a Washington, D.C. owner who wanted to drive his car with other owners. By 1961 there were forty-nine regions. Cascade was the fiftieth, chartered on a Sunday in October by a small group of Oregon owners who had been holding informal meets for several years and decided to make it official.
The first roster was a couple of dozen names. The first official drive was up Mt. Hood. The chapter newsletter, der Auspuff, began life as a one-page mimeograph distributed at the next meet. Sixty-five years later, the chapter is still doing all three of those things - growing the roster, driving up the mountain, and publishing the newsletter quarterly.
Chapter dossier
- Chartered
- 15 October 1961
- Region #
- 50 of PCA
- Oregon rank
- 2nd region chartered
- Chapters
- Central + Southern
- Newsletter
- der Auspuff (quarterly)
- Founding members
- ≈ two dozen
- Continuous publication
- 65+ years
The timeline
- 1961Chartered
October 15, 1961. The fiftieth region in PCA history. The second-oldest in Oregon. A handful of Pacific Northwest Porsche owners who wanted to drive together more often than they were currently driving together.
- 1960sder Auspuff begins
The chapter newsletter is launched in the early sixties as a mimeographed sheet handed out at meets. Sixty-five years later it is still publishing - quarterly now - under the same name (German for exhaust pipe). Issues from the seventies are pinned to garage walls across Oregon.
- 1970s-1980sThe air-cooled era
The chapter grows alongside the 911. 911s, 912s, the 914, the 924, the 944. Members organize the spring tour, the fall tour, and a holiday banquet that has been held in some version every December since the late sixties.
- 1990sTwo-chapter structure
Cascade splits into Central and Southern chapters as membership grows beyond what a single calendar can serve. Both chapters retain shared events - the spring tour, banquets - while organizing local meets independently.
- 2000sWater-cooled, online
The 996, 997, Boxster, and Cayman bring a new wave of members. The chapter launches its first website. der Auspuff archives begin appearing as PDFs.
- 2020sSixty-five years on
Membership today spans the full Porsche range from 356s to 992s, daily drivers to garage queens. The chapter continues to run cars and coffee, drives across the Cascades, tech sessions, and the same banquet they have been running since the Kennedy administration.
The chapter never stopped meeting.
Through five decades of changes in what counts as a Porsche, what counts as a drive, and what counts as a club, the calendar kept publishing. Members keep showing up. The newsletter keeps shipping. That is most of the history. The rest is just which roads we drove that year.