Dan Rather of CBS News named Rockcrawling the "Fastest growing sport in America,"

Rockcrawling become a competitive sport when Phil Howell came up with a points system to penalized teams 4-wheel drive vehicle, a driver, and navigator known as a spotter for navigational errors. The idea was to penalize teams with points for hitting navigational markers set for vehicles to drive between, for putting the vehicle in reverse, or using a winch to help aid forward progress through a course. In this new sport, the lowest score wins. Harder, optional lines through the course gave negative bonus points.

The first nationally recognized event starting in 1998, showing a field of 40 competitors driving highly modified vehicles over the hardest trails in the nation. Excitement grew and more promoters popped up around the country, hosting large scale rockcrawling competitions. In the first years, there were over 25 venues and crawling circuits for competition throughout the nation. Teams found themselves forced to decide which circuit to compete in. Decisions were based on media coverage, attendance records, and demographics.

Once the sport began to flourish, so did the after-market industry. As competitors found themselves driving over more harsh terrain and breaking more parts, the need for stronger, more sport focused four-wheel drive parts came into the spotlight and the after-market industry used rockcrawling competitions as a platform to test new products and materials. Soon the weak parts were not the cause of a team not completing a course, instead it was the extreme risk of rolling a vehicle over that was the wall which teams had to overcome. During this current era in the sport, broken parts are at a low, while excitement is at an all time high.

Now teams are competing at specially built Rockcrawling Facilities with rocks created with the same gunite materials as a backyard pool. While some think the future of the sport is in the arenas, the unpredictability is still a favorite with teams. Currently the largest crawling circuit, World Extreme Rock Crawling Championship Series or W.E.ROCK, boasts events and sites in seven different countries and has the U.S. circuit down to a National Series, National Championship, and World Championship. The sport has grown so much that teams from all over the world congregated at the first true World Championship in Las Vegas in 2006.

Today Rock Crawling has a huge fan base and is nationally aired over several high profile television stations featuring over 160 teams in the W.E.ROCK series, seven countries under the W.E.ROCK Sanctioning Body producing over twenty-four national events, ten regional subsidiary event circuits involving over thirty events, and a regional count of nearly 200 teams. These numbers show that the growth and transformation of the sport has taken huge strides in a short amount of time. Even though the strides have been huge, they have created a strong base with regional, or feeder events into a national and world championship showing that the sport is also incredibly stable for years to come.

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