Shilo in the 1970s

If not for three things, Ainsworth Road would be just another shoulder-less, litter-strewn, two-lane country road where people routinely drive like maniacs. If not for three things.

One is invisible. That is Ainsworth Road's past — the centuries when it wound its way through a different world.

Another is the parkland — Big Maple Lake Park, Deep River County Park, their woods and waters, and the variety of life that inhabits them.

The third is, I think, the most visible and popular. That is Shilo Ranch. And I say "most popular" not because so many people own or ride horses, but because all sorts of people who happen to be driving along Ainsworth or Grand Boulevard admire the horses and want to communicate with them.

I live across the street, so I see this all the time. People driving by slow down and look out their car windows at the horses. They open their windows to let their dogs bark at the horses. They honk their horns at the horses. They pull over onto the soft, grassy ground, get out of their cars, and go up to the fence to visit the horses. They take photos and videos of the horses. Sometimes after these visits, the ground by the fence is strewn with carrots or apples. People just love those horses.

So, in honor of this jewel set on a band of shoulder-less, litter-strewn, two-lane country road, here are some newspaper articles from the early days of Shilo Ranch.


(Click on images to enlarge)
Hobart Gazette, 2 Sept. 1971.
You can just barely see, in the top left photo, that the sign out front reads: "Pavel Arabians." I don't know exactly when they started using "Shilo," but it was sometime before the summer of 1973, as we will see below.


Hobart Gazette, 7 June 1973.


Hobart Gazette, 12 July 1973.


Hobart Gazette, 19 Feb. 1975.

♦    ♦    ♦
I've read ahead in the microfilm, so I know that Shilo was sold at auction in June 1988. The article I read attributed its financial problems to trouble in the oil industry — those oil people couldn't afford Arabian horses anymore. Shilo continued its operations, but without its founder.

Here is Wayne Pavel's senior photo, from Hobart High School's Memories yearbook of 1956 …


Image from Ancestry.com.

… and his obituary, from 2004:


(Click on image to enlarge)
"Obituaries/News," Daily Journal (Johnson Co., Ind.), 10 Feb. 2004.