JOHNSON VALLEY · BIG BEAR · SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

Not the
herd.

When the old-fogey crowd called it a night, the Black Sheep were just getting started. We came to wheel, camp, laugh, and have a damn good time—but underneath it all was something permanent: a tight-knit brotherhood that always had each other’s backs.

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WHEEL HARD // STAY UP LATE
BUILD IT ◆WHEEL IT ◆WIN JUICE ◆THE JUICE WINS ◆FYT ◆BUILD IT ◆WHEEL IT ◆WIN JUICE ◆THE JUICE WINS ◆FYT ◆
Why “Black Sheep”

The trail ended.
The night didn’t.

Back in the day, a NAXJA weekend in Johnson Valley or Big Bear had two shifts. The old-fogey crew was usually in bed by nine. We weren’t. The Black Sheep stayed up, partied, traded stories, laughed too loud, and made the most of every trip. We may have been the misfits around camp, but we became brothers—on the trail, in the garage, and everywhere life took us afterward.

Recovered threads

SELECTED PUBLIC RECORD / NAXJA
JUN 02 2007
NAXJA / SOCAL

An early public trace

By June 2007, Skwerly’s NAXJA signature already identified him as a Black Sheep Crew member—one of the earliest indexed traces we found.

View the surviving thread ↗
2008—2011
MEMBER SIGNATURES

The name travels with the people

“BLACK SHEEP CREW MEMBER” and “BLACK SHEEP CREW!!!!!!” recur across technical posts, builds, classifieds, military discussions, and everyday forum life. The crew was an identity people carried, not merely an event banner.

See a 2008 reference ↗
FEB 2010
PARTS TRAIN

Get the part where it needs to go

A Yucaipa-to-meet-and-greet parts relay captures the wider community ethic perfectly: multiple people offering trucks, pickups, storage, and handoffs until the job was covered.

Follow the parts train ↗
APR 2010
BUILD HISTORY

One Jeep, one lesson at a time

Skwerly’s build retrospective moves from a stock XJ through lift, tires, gears, lockers, trail damage, and the eternal claim that the Jeep is finally “done.” Its real advice: learn the vehicle, grow into the trails, and wheel with people who will get dirty beside you.

Read the build story ↗
2010
MEMBERSHIP BANTER

No votes against? Welcome aboard.

A joking exchange about when someone became a “full fledged member” ends with the perfect informal ruling: no votes against means no problem. The archive reads like friendship first and bylaws never.

Read the exchange ↗

The unofficial
crew code.

Wheel hard

Build it, learn it, and use it. The best stories rarely begin with a spotless Jeep sitting in a parking lot.

Have a damn good time

The trail was only half the weekend. Campfires, late nights, loud laughter, and stories nobody outside the crew would believe were part of the deal.

Brothers show up

A broken axle, an unfinished project, a bad day, or a hard season in life—when one of us needed help, the crew had his back.

The juice wins. You lose.

“Win Juice” belongs to the crew’s late-night vocabulary. If you know, you know. Some stories are better left around the campfire.

Home terrain

Johnson Valley. Big Bear. Wherever the crew landed.

The public footprint stretches across Orange County, the Inland Empire, 29 Palms, and the high desert. The real landmarks were the trips: hard trails by day, camp together at night, and the kind of weekends that turned Jeep friends into lifelong brothers.

SKWERLYHAWKEYESIDEWAYSSTARIONSHELBYGRIMMY / GRIMMJEEPERDUMPTRUCKWILDMAN89YAMADEVIL1XFLOPPY

Crew names come from firsthand history, supported where possible by surviving public references. This remains a living list, not a complete roster.

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  (O)              (O)---'

Brothers then.
Brothers now.

The Jeeps brought us together. The trails gave us stories. The late nights made us the Black Sheep. Having each other’s backs made us brothers.

CREW HISTORY COMBINES FIRSTHAND ACCOUNT WITH SURVIVING PUBLIC FORUM RECORDS. THIS ARCHIVE WILL KEEP GROWING AS MORE PHOTOS, NAMES, AND STORIES COME HOME.