Joder Arabian Ranch History

Anna Best Joder began Joder Arabian Ranch in 1954 with the purchase of some 600 acres of land in Boulder County on the east and west sides of Highway 36, approximately three miles north of Boulder city limits.

Anna Best was a woman before her time—a published playwright, expert in Arabian horse breeding and lineage, and founding editor of the national Arabian Horse News magazine, owner and operator of the Hobby Horse Gift Shop as well as the matriarch of JAR for many years.  At one point during her tenure, JAR was home to the Rocky Mountain School of Horsemanship, the Gift Shop, a controlled breeding program, a boarding operation, and some 90 Arabian horses including the award winning Arabian stallion Ibn Rogue. 

In the late 1970s, Anna Best passed the reins over to her son, Robert Joder and his wife Eloise Witt Joder.  Robert Joder, upon reassessing the carrying capacity of the pastures, began reducing the size of the herd and expanding the Ranch boarding operation along with an extensive array of associated equine activities to bring the community into contact with the horse—beginner-oriented horse shows, costume horse shows, equine-assisted therapy, equine workshops, to name a few—always with the natural horsemanship techniques (think, “The Horse Whisperer”) as the foundational philosophy.