Yellow Fever

About the Book

This is a story about a Cherokee family who survived forced displacement from Georgia to the northeastern corner of the Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) by the U.S. Army in the late 1830s and now seeks more farming land and better opportunities in the far West in the late 1840s.

Their search for farmland in the extreme western part of the Kansas Territory (close to the Rocky Mountains) yielded disappointing results initially. Then their entire outlook was changed when the word came over the Rocky Mountains that gold has been discovered in huge quantities on public land in central California.

The Simmons family knew a lot about gold mining, and they were tempted to mine for the elusive yellow metal again.

They had a big decision to make, and they made it quickly-they headed west for California, across the most unforgiving stretch of land anywhere in North America.

About the Author

Richard Braden is a retired Army/Air Force person, an aeronautical engineer who worked for NASA and Lockheed, and a university professor who taught in Ohio and Colorado. He found out about the ?Simmons? family in this story by chance, while reading some of the old documents about Douglas County, Colorado at the library. No one knows their real family name, but they spent some time in this county, and then headed for the gold fields in 1849 via Fort Bridger and Salt Lake City.