In 1893 Katharine Lee Bates, an English professor from Massachusetts, visited the Colorado Rockies. Her stay included an expedition, in a prairie wagon, to the 14,000-foot summit of Pike’s Peak. From that towering mountaintop, “the wonder of America,” with its “sea-like expanse,”1 spread before her. Returning to the hotel, she penned the words to “America the Beautiful” as they poured from her heart. For more than a century, this anthem has stirred the citizens of this nation as a fitting tribute to the beauty of our land.
Today, purple mountains still rise in majesty, and amber waves of grain continue to fill the breadbasket of our nation.2 Look at the striking contrasts all around us. The shimmering Great Salt Lake, a remnant of prehistoric Lake Bonneville, now circles Antelope Island, tinged in hues of purple and red as it meets the western, azure sky. A few hours’ drive in any direction reveals landscapes of stunning red rock canyons, steaming geysers and waterfalls, snowcapped peaks, lush forests, and valleys richly carpeted with flowers. God has indeed shed His grace on our soil.3
This is a land of vistas both spectacular and serene, fertile and barren, inviting and remote. From “sea to shining sea,”4 from the pine-trimmed inlets of New England to the badlands of the Dakotas, from the rocky beaches of Oregon to the bayous of the Mississippi Delta are sights and scenes that lift our hearts and enrich our souls.
All these beauties make up the land we love. America the beautiful, we so proudly call you home.
Program #3978
1. Katharine Lee Bates, notes. Available at http://www.fuzzylu.com/falmouth/bates/
america.html.
2. See “America the Beautiful,” Hymns, no. 338.
3. See “America the Beautiful.”
4. “America the Beautiful.”