In 1908, Colonel Allen Allensworth founded a small town in the dry alkaline soil of California's Central Valley. A high-ranking U.S. Army officer and chaplain who had escaped from slavery, he envisioned a utopian community where African Americans could thrive. The town flourished between 1908 and 1918, when some three hundred families relocated to the town to establish a self-sufficient farming community with its own school, church, businesses, and municipal government. Its existence became and is to this day a symbol and an inspiration to African Americans around the country. In 1976, Colonel Allensworth State Historic Park was created to restore the buildings and preserve the history of this exceptional community.