Steve Kruger becomes TKO’s first staff person July 1st, 2017. Through a capacity grant from REI Portland, Steve began his work in a part-time, 6-month duration. When certain benchmarks in fundraising and grants were achieved, TKO hoped his position would move into a full-time role sometime in 2008. He was a TKO Board Advisor since 2011 with 10 years experience with Oregon State Parks and joined as a TKO Board member in 2016. A Park Manager with Oregon State Park on the east end of the Columbia Gorge in early 2016, he was inspired by partnering on an American Hiking Society Volunteer Vacation with TKO and joined the Board that year. With outdoor recreation being recognized as a economic driver in the state, now was the time for TKO to embark in bringing on paid staff for the first time.

Summer 2011 – Metro’s Quarterly Trails Forum staff liaison Mel Huie brought forward a need for a more comprehensive statewide trails effort to support advocacy and stewardship. A project team from Metro and OPRD staff, including Mel Huie, Lake Strongheart McTighe, Robert Spurlock, Rocky Houston, Steve Kruger and more were asked to do research on what groups are already in a position to adopt this role. Then TKO Board President Ryan Ojerio was interviewed by Steve Kruger and it was clear TKO was in a position to grow.

TKO happily accepted ownership of the Portland Hikers Forum & Field Guide from Jeff Statt, founding TKO Board President and co-creator of the Forum & Field Guide.

Like many seedy/rogue trails groups, the original trailkeepers from the Forum acted without official support from land managers out at Owl Point. To be trusted and grow support as a new nonprofit we understood that would have to change. Our first Forest Service project in April 2008 was along Angels Rest trail in the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area.

The original TKO board was partly made up of staff from partner non-profits, another of Jeff’s ideas to ensure close partnerships during the startup, and to borrow from the expertise of folks working for established non-profits. This focus on partnerships with other non-profits continued in board membership for the first 4-5 years, before TKO transitioned to more of an at-large board of interested volunteers. Jeff Statt served as TKO founding and first board president.

Jeff Statt took the lead in setting up an exploratory meeting, and invited interested non-profits and public agencies from around Oregon and Southwest Washington to gauge whether a new non-profit was needed. Jeff also polled several non-profits in Oregon who had some sort of stewardship program with the same question, and there was strong support for the idea. Many were frustrated with their own stewardship programs and were eager for a non-profit organization with a core stewardship mission to partner with. The formation meeting happened in October 2017, and the TKO board has met regularly ever since, initially as the Trails Association of Oregon (TAO), but switching to our current name in the spring of 2008 after some concern about how the “TAO” acronym would be received.

Over the summer of 2007, the Forum became the unofficial place where an informal project to rescue the Old Vista Ridge trail on Mount Hood was coordinated. In September 2007, members of the forum organized what would become TKO’s founding stewardship trip to Old Vista Ridge. Several folks from the forum met at the trailhead and brushed out nearly one-half mile of trail that hadn’t been maintained in decades. Seeing how much work they were able to accomplish in one day as a group of volunteers was the inspiration for creating TKO, and the first meeting of TKO was planned on the way down from the mountain that day. 

TKO was founded in the fall of 2007. As the Portland Hikers community grew, several members began to talk about creating a service arm to benefit trails, largely in response to obvious maintenance backlogs and overuse on trails in the area that were resulting from budget constraints — especially for federal lands.

PortlandHikers.org Forum, a private online hiking community was founded by Jeff Statt and Jeff Black, two Portland-area programmers.