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1859-1929

“America the Beautiful”

As the daughter and grand-daughter of Congregational pastors, Katherine grew up with a solid Christian background. She attended Wellesley College, and later joined its faculty as an English professor. This author of many volumes of poetry, travel and children’s books is credited with creating the character of Mrs. Claus in the poem “Goody Santa Claus on a Sleigh Ride.” She was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970.

The first draft of “America the Beautiful” was hastily written in a notebook in the summer of 1893 when she was teaching English at summer school at Colorado College in Colorado Springs. She wrote: “One day, some of the other teachers and I decided to go on a trip to 14,000-foot Pikes Peak. . . .when I saw the view, I felt great joy. All the wonder of America seemed displayed there, with the sea-like expanse . . . . It was then. . . that the opening lines of the hymn floated into my mind.”

She later said, “Greatness and goodness are not necessarily synonymous. Rome was great, but she was not good. . . . Unless we are willing to crown our greatness with goodness and our bounty with brotherhood, our beloved America may go the same way.” The last verse about gleaming alabaster cities was inspired by her visit to the White City at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago that same summer. She put her finished poem into her notebook, unread. But in 1895, she sent it to a publisher. It caught on quickly with the public. In 1960 America launched its first communications satellite, Echo I. It received and played back the first music used in the new space age: her beautiful hymn.