June 29, 2022 – THEME WEEK DAY 3

We’re halfway through our Patriotic Songs theme week! Today we’re talking about “America the Beautiful”. The song was written by an English professor named Katharine Lee Bates in 1893. She had taken a trip by train to teach at Colorado College in Colorado Springs. Toward the end of her tine there, she and some of her colleagues went to the top of Pikes Peak. The words of the poem started coming to her as she took in the breathtaking views. Several of the sights on her trip made it into the poem – the World’s Columbian Expedition in Chicago, the wheat fields of Kansas she had seen from the train, and the stunning view of the Great Pains from the top of Pikes Peak. She wrote down the poem as soon as she got back to her hotel. “Purple mountains majesty” referred to the shade of the Rockies from the top of Pikes Peak, and that inspired the Colorado Rockies to have purple as one of its team colors.
The poem was published 2 years later, fittingly on the 4th of July. It quickly became popular with the public. By 1900, 75 different melodies had been used for the poem. The tune we use today is a hymn written by a church organist and choir director from Newark, New Jersey, named Samuel Ward. His song and Bates’ poem were first published together in 1910. The 2 never met, and Ward died in 1903, not knowing the national importance his music would have. Bates, however, died in 1929, when the song’s popularity had long been established.
At various times over the years, there have been efforts to “America the Beautiful” legal status as either a National Hymn or as an anthem equal to or in place of “The Star-Spangled Banner”. In fact, it was considered to be a candidate for National Anthem before 1931. Learn more here.