Just about 90 miles from the city of Santa Fe, as the crow flies, you will find Preservation, New Mexico, along Chico Creek. A single building trading post founded by the Franklins, an African-American family, Preservation provided the first fresh water many wagon trains encountered after their journey through Oklahoma and Clayton, NM, to the east.

Just three years later, Preservation is a thriving town filled with an ambitious, multiracial population.

These are their stories.