Where Is Colorado?It was the summer of 1893. Katharine Lee Bates, a poet and professor at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, traveled to Colorado Springs. She would spend a few weeks there teaching English. One day, she and a group of fellow teachers rode a wagon to the summit of Pikes Peak. This famous mountain in the Rockies had already become a symbol of the American West.
Bates was in awe of the views from the peak. From its top, she could look out over the prairie grasses and wheat fields of Kansas! When she got back to her hotel, Bates wrote a poem. The first few lines, inspired by Pikes Peak, are as follows:
O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
Bates’s poem was later set to music. It became the song “America the Beautiful.” Colorado’s mountains, and the land surrounding them, are still remembered through the song. They’re a part of what many people picture when they think of Colorado today.
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