Katharine Lee Bates stood on the top of Pikes Peak for just 30 minutes in the summer of 1893, but that was all the inspiration she needed to write a patriotic poem called, “America.”
Today, of course, we know it as the song “America the Beautiful.” Bates intended her poem as a kind of prayer for a country that had lost its way, biographer Melinda Ponder told Colorado Matters. Ponder's new book is “Katharine Lee Bates: From Sea to Shining Sea.”
Hear versions of “America the Beautiful” by the Indianapolis Children’s Choir and Ray Charles.
