1893: A Long-Distance Train Trip Provides Inspiration for a Poem that Eventually Became a Still-Popular Song

July 22, 1893

Here’s proof that transportation not only gets you from point A to point B but can also be inspirational. . . It was on this date that 33-year-old Katharine Lee Bates, an English professor at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, found herself taking in a majestic view from atop the Colorado-based mountain Pikes Peak and started penning the words of a poem that would ultimately become the still-popular song America the Beautiful. 

Bates was in that part of the world to teach a summer session at Colorado College, and she and a few other instructors used some free time to visit Pikes Peak. It was a particular mode of transportation that first helped spark Bates’ literary imagination during her sojourn out west. Specifically, the train trip that Bates took to get from her native Massachusetts to Colorado provided her with vivid images that she saw either through coach windows or at various stops en route. 

These sources of inspiration along the way, which she likewise somehow incorporated in her poem, included Niagara Falls; several exhibits at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago; and the abundant wheat fields of the Midwest. Bates’ poem was published two years later and quickly embraced by the public. 

Several pieces of music were adapted to Bates’ poem, but the most preferred melody for well over a century now is one that had first been composed by church organist and choirmaster Samuel A. Ward during the 1880s. That melody and Bates’ poem were first combined in 1910 and entitled America the Beautiful. Coincidentally, Ward had been inspired to compose that music while likewise traveling on board a mode of transportation — in his case, a ferryboat carrying him to his home in New York City after a visit to Coney Island.

(The accompanying photo taken in 1999 depicts the plaque atop Pikes Peak that commemorates America the Beautiful.)

Photo Credit – User:48states (licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/deed.en)

Additional information on the 1893 train trip that inspired Katharine Lee Bates to write America the Beautiful is available at https://www.npr.org/2019/04/04/709531017/america-the-beautiful-american-anthem and https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/places-of-katharine-lee-bates-and-america-the-beautiful.htm