This Mountaintop View Inspired the Patriotic Anthem "America the Beautiful"

The lyrics for “America the Beautiful” were written by Katharine Lee Bates in the summer of 1893. The author, poet, and professor, who died at the age of 69 in 1929, originally wrote the song as a poem, which she had simply referred to as “A the B,” according to an archive from the Los Angeles Times. 

Bates first wrote the lyrics that are so well-known today after a trip by prairie wagon and then mules up to Colorado’s Pikes Peak, one of the highest summits of the Rocky Mountains. According to the National Park Service, Bates was in awe of the beautiful landscapes she could see from the top, which inspired the song’s famous lyrics such as “purple mountain majesties” and “amber waves of grain.”

Years later, Bates’ original poem gained widespread attention after it was printed in the weekly newspaper The Congregationalist on July 4, 1895, according to the Library of Congress. She had revised and tweaked the poem in the following years before it was eventually paired with music by Samuel A. Ward in 1910. Ward, who died in 1903, had composed the famous melody years prior in 1882.

“America the Beautiful” is a classic patriotic song about admiring the nation’s expansive natural beauty and diverse landscapes. 

In a 1925 essay, per The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, Bates wrote that the opening lines of the song came to her as she took in “the sea-like expanse of fertile country … under those ample skies” from the top of Pikes Peak in Colorado. “All the wonder of America seemed displayed there,” Bates once wrote of the majestic view that inspired her song, per NPR.

Bates once wrote, according to a Los Angeles Times archive, that “the words just floated into my mind" and "it is the people who sing it who make the song."​​

“America the Beautiful” also serves as a tribute to soldiers who serve to protect their country, specifically the lyrics: “O beautiful for heroes proved / In liberating strife / Who more than self their country loved / And mercy more than life!”

"[Bates] realized she had written a song that spoke or gave voice to these soldiers. They could picture their country that they loved and now would be able to come home to,” Melinda Ponder, who authored a biography on Bates, explained to NPR.