Shipshewana
The first thing Mel Riegsecker built to sell, he did not want to sell. He asked his father to price it out of reach. His father sold it, somebody wanted another, and fifty-six years later the family runs eight businesses in a town of eight hundred and thirty-nine people.
Shipshewana
In 1970 a man in Shipshewana made a miniature horse-drawn wagon for his own enjoyment and it sold immediately. Sixteen years later, on the other side of the same street, a group of churches raised a barn because so many people were coming to town. Both of those are still there.
Shipshewana
Shipshewana gained thirty-eight people between 1920 and 1950 and lost some of them along the way. Then it gained a hundred and thirty-six in a single decade and has never gone backward since. Something happened in the sixties.
Stroh
In 1915 a cement town fifteen years old organised a bank. Thirty-five people put their names to it, seven of them women, five years before women could vote. It is still here, it is still independent, and it is the largest business partner the county chamber has.
Three organisations in this county keep fuller directories than this one ever will, and their lists are current in a way ours cannot be.
Member directory, searchable, plus an events calendar and a job board.
Works with businesses moving here, expanding here, or starting up. Publishes a Starting a Business packet.
Shops, restaurants, lodging and events, weighted toward Shipshewana and the visitor trade.
Every business in the county can list itself here, free, and always will be able to. It is the shortest of the four lists on this page and the only one we keep ourselves.
The Gazette is published by Indian Lakes Marketing, the company Katelynne and Brett Hahn run in Wolcottville. It is the same business, not a separate one, and some of the businesses written about here are or have been its clients.
Where that is true, the piece says so at the top. Money does not change what a piece says or whether it runs, and listings and profiles are free. If any of that ever stops being true, this page will say so.
Nothing on this site is behind a paywall and nothing on it is sponsored. If it has been worth something to you, there are three ways to give something back, and only one of them involves money.