Katharine Lee Bates, a poet and English professor, was inspired to write ‘America the Beautiful’ after her travels to Pikes Peak in Colorado. Bates was born before the Civil War and many of her writings focused on social reform. She was a professor at Wellesley College in Massachusetts and decided to venture west to teach for the summer at Colorado College.
Her Journey to Pikes Peak
Bates had never been west of Philadelphia before her trip to Colorado. Her travels by train created inspiration, including patriotism on display at the World’s Fair in Chicago, the prairies of Kansas, and the ‘sublimity of the Rockies.’ She and her colleagues were shown Manitou Springs, Cascade, and Garden of the Gods, which she described as ‘all so marvelous that our stock of exclamations ran out.’
One day, she and her teacher friends ventured up Pikes Peak via ‘prairie schooner,’ pulled by horses that were traded out with mules halfway. Once at the top, they were advised against jumping out of the wagon due to the altitude, a warning that befell their guide, who himself fainted at the summit and curtailed their visit to 30 minutes.
The brief view at 14,115 feet was enough to bring a sense of awe to Bates, who wrote of its ‘purple mountain majesties above the fruited plain.’ That night, upon returning to the Antlers Hotel, Bates wrote the first lines of her poem. She made several revisions to her poem before its final version as we know it today.
Original reporting: KRDO (Colorado Springs metro) — read the source article.
