In 1893, Katharine Lee Bates traveled up the iconic Pikes Peak near Colorado Springs, and the trip inspired her to write the beginning of one of the United States’ most iconic songs – America, The Beautiful.

According to the National Park Service (NPS), Bates came to Colorado Springs to teach at the Colorado Summer School. Before her three-week stay ended, she rode a prairie wagon to the top of Pikes Peak. Looking out from the top of the mountain, the view from the “purple mountain majesties” inspired Bates to write the opening lines of “America the Beautiful.”

The NPS reports that Bates said after her visit that “all the wonder of America seemed displayed there, with sea-like expanse.”

The song was first published as a poem called “America” in The Congregationalist in 1895. The NPS reports that by 1904 the poem had become extremely popular and was set to different musical arrangements, with the most popular pairing to Samuel A. Ward’s “Materna,” This is the tune that we know today.

The words and music were published together as “America the Beautiful” in 1910, and Bates published a final version of the song in the Boston Evening Transcript in 1913.

Today, a statue of Bates sits in front of the Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum, looking toward Pikes Peak.

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