Katharine Lee Bates, was born on August 12, 1859 in Falmouth, Massachusetts; she was described as a “brilliant trail-blazing woman – poet, teacher, community builder, and patriot – who challenged Americans to make their country the best it could become in its values and literature.” (Ponder)
Bates graduated from Wellesley College in 1880; she joined the faculty just five years later. After earning her master’s degree at Oxford University in 1890, Bates became the head of the English literature department.
“It appears that in 1893 Miss Bates had been called to join the faculty of a summer school at Colorado Springs. On the way she visited the Columbian World’s Fair at Chicago.”
The end of the three-weeks’ session of the school was celebrated by the stranger members of the faculty (including Dr. Rolfe, the Shakespearean scholar; Professor Todd, the Amherst astronomer, and Miss Bates’ colleague at Wellesley, Professor Katherine Conan) with an excursion to the summit of Pike’s Peak.” (Baxter in Boston Herald)
“We strangers celebrated the close of the session by a merry expedition to the top of Pike’s Peak, making the ascent by the only method then available for people not vigorous enough to achieve the climb on foot nor adventurous enough for burro-riding.”
“Prairie wagons, their tail-boards emblazoned with the traditional slogan, ‘Pike’s Peak or Bust,’ were pulled by horses up to the half-way house, where the horses were relieved by mules.”
“We were hoping for half and hour on the summit, but two of our party became so faint in the rarified air that we were bundled into the wagons again and started on our downward plunge so speedily that our sojourn on the peak remains in memory hardly more than one ecstatic gaze.”
“It was then and there, as I was looking out over the sea-like expanse of fertile country spreading away so far under those ample skies, that the opening lines of the hymn floated into my mind.” (Bates)
Gazing out from the top, the view from the “purple mountain majesties” (the Rocky Mountains) captivated Bates and inspired the opening lines or her poem (it later became a song).
In the first stanza, Bates describes “amber waves of grain.” She later remarked that this lyric referred to the seas of grass and grain fields in Kansas that she could see from the top of Pikes Peak.
The final stanzas of the song offer praise for “heroes proved in liberating strife” and a vision of “nobleness,” and “brotherhood.” These lines became popular among American troops fighting overseas during World War I. (NPS)
The refrain “From sea to shining sea!” is perhaps one of the more recognizable lyrics. Yet, the first version of Bates’ poem read “And music-hearted sea!” The more familiar wording did not appear until 1910.
O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed His grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!
“When we left Colorado Springs the four stanzas were penciled in my notebook, together with other memoranda, in verse and prose, of the trip.”
“The Wellesley work soon absorbed time and attention again, the notebook was laid aside, and I do not remember paying heed to these verses until the second summer following, when I copied them out and sent them to The Congregationalist, where they first appeared in print July 4, 1895.” (It was first presented as a poem, “America”.)
“The hymn attracted an unexpected amount of attention. It was almost at once set to music by Silas G. Pratt. Other tunes were written for the words and so many requests came to me, with still increasing frequency, that in 1904 I rewrote it, trying to make the phraseology more simple and direct.” (Bates, Museum on the Green)
“America the Beautiful” has been called “an expression of patriotism at its finest.” It conveys an attitude of appreciation and gratitude for the nation’s extraordinary physical beauty and abundance, without triumphalism. (LOC)
Katharine Lee Bates died March 28, 1929 and is buried in Falmouth, Massachusetts.
Radiocarbon dating indicates that Clovis people were the first to inhabit the area, roughly around 11,000 BC. More recently, Ute, Comanche, Arapaho and Cheyenne also frequented the area. The Utes called Pikes Peak “Sun Mountain Sitting Big” and believed that it was here that the Great Spirit created the world.
Following the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, Pikes Peak became part of the United States. In 1806, Lieutenant Zebulon Montgomery Pike, after whom the peak is named, was sent on an expedition to locate the headwaters of the Arkansas and Red Rivers.
The expedition also aimed to explore the new territory and its natural resources, as well as establish friendly relations with Native American nations. On November 15 he spotted the peak and referred to it as “the Grand Peak.” (Colorado Encyclopedia)
Pikes Peak is the 31st highest peak out of 54 Colorado peaks (at 14,115 feet). It is the farthest east of the big peaks in the Rocky Mountain chain, which contributed to its early fame among explorers, pioneers and immigrants.
During the 1850s and 1860s an estimated 100,000 people moved to Colorado in search of gold and were known as “Fifty-Niners”, a reference to 1859, the year the rush to Colorado peaked.
The initial gold discoveries were made below confluence of Cherry Creek and the South Platte River, which is now the location of downtown Denver. Denver City was established near the gold discoveries in late 1858.
The first “bonanza” of rich gold placers was discovered by a prospecting party from Georgia led by John Gregory, at a site that was first named “Gregory Gulch” and would soon be the site of the Central City mining district. Other gold discoveries were made and news reports back East caused the frenzied rush to the Pikes Peak region.
It was the symbol of the 1858 Gold Rush to Colorado with the slogan, “Pikes Peak or Bust”, reference to the prominent mountain at the eastern edge of the Rocky Mountains that guided many early prospectors to the region westward over the Great Plains.
