On a warm day in 1988, Riana Peaker-Newman, then 16, and her father, Waylan Peaker, drove the 20 miles south from Santa Fe to Madrid, a once booming coal town nestled in the foothills of the Ortiz Mountains.
Waylan, a self-taught jeweler and miner, had come in search of turquoise located in the nearby hills.
When the pair came upon Madrid, they found a beautiful, sleepy town full of abandoned miners’ cabins.
There was a bar, a few shops, a few more tourists, and, according to Peaker-Newman, an abundance of possibility.